


The Tyranny of Distance

by baeconandeggs, surgicalfocus



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Age Swap, Angst, Animal Death, M/M, Mentions of Suicide and Suicidal Ideation, Romance, Selkies, Slice of Life, Supernatural Elements, brief mentions of past minor character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 18:38:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 89,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14899853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeconandeggs/pseuds/baeconandeggs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/surgicalfocus/pseuds/surgicalfocus
Summary: Baekhyun has heard many rumours about the reclusive keeper of the Redhill Lighthouse, who lives alone on a tiny island not far from the fishing village where he grew up. A freak storm during a visit to the island leads him to an encounter with the keeper — a shy and gentle soul, with a fondness for wearing tropical shirts. Intrigued by the solitary romance of the lighthouse-keeping life, Baekhyun takes up the vacant position of keeper’s assistant, but soon discovers that there may be more to Chanyeol and his island home than what can be seen on the surface.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt #:** BAE914  
>  **Disclaimer: baeconandeggs/the mods is/are not the author/s of this story. Authors will be credited and tagged after reveals.** The celebrities' names/images are merely borrowed and do not represent who the celebrities are in real life. No offense is intended towards them, their families or friends. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this fictional work. No copyright infringement is intended.
> 
>  **Author's Note:** First of all, a massive thanks to M for beta-reading on short notice, and always being there to offer advice (and listen to me whine LOL). Huge thanks also to those who cheered me on when I was ready to dump this thing on its butt lol, and to the mods for working so tirelessly and being so understanding as always. Lastly, to the prompter: I fell in love with your beautiful prompt the first time I saw it in the last round. Back then, I didn't believe that I could write it; but when I saw it again this year, I knew I couldn't let it go a second time. The result is super experimental, and far from perfect. You may have to dive a bit deeper to get into this one, but I hope you will find something good. An accompanying playlist can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3W6YqbtIjmLPD7j1h11Exh0o_5yBxAS1). Enjoy x

_They sing of the grandeur of cliffs inland,_  
_But the cliffs of the ocean are truly grand;_  
_And I long to wander and dream and doubt_  
_Where the cliffs by the ocean run out and out._

 _To the northward far as the eye can reach_  
_Are sandhill, boulder, and sandy beach;_  
_But southward rises the track for me,_  
_Where the cliffs by the ocean run out to sea._

 _Friends may be gone in the morning fair,_  
_But the cliffs by the ocean are always there;_  
_Lovers may leave when the wind is chill,_  
_But the cliffs by the ocean are steadfast still._

 _They watch the sea and they ward the land,_  
_And they warn the ships from the treacherous sand;_  
_And I sadly think in the twilight hour_  
_What I might have been had I known my power._

 _Where the smoke-cloud blurs and the white sails fill,_  
_They point the ships to keep seaward still;_  
_And I think — Ah, me! — and I think — Ah, me!_  
_Of the wreck I'd saved had I kept to sea._

 _Oh the cliffs are old and the cliffs are sad,_  
_And they know me sane, while men deem me mad._  
_Oh the cliffs are firm and the cliffs are strong,_  
_And they know me right, while men deem me wrong._

 _And I sometimes think in the dawning grey,_  
_I am old as they, I am old as they;_  
_And I think, I think that in field and town_  
_My spirit shall live till the cliffs come down._

_— Henry Lawson_

 

 

 

I.

The last time Baekhyun saw The Day's End, the boat was so far from the shore that he could have fit it between the thumb and forefinger of the hand he held out in front of him. He remembered pretending to squash it like a bug, annoyed that Minseok hadn't even asked him if he wanted to come along. Clenched in his other hand was the letter his brother had slipped beneath his bedroom door, scrawled on a crumpled piece of paper torn out from a notepad. It read:

_Hey Squish,_

_By the time you read this I’ll be gone, so please don't try to come after me. I'm taking the boat out to look for mum, since no one else is doing anything about it. Tell dad I’m sorry and not to be mad. I won’t do anything stupid, I promise. I’ll only go out as far as Redhill (maybe a bit farther) and I’ll be back home before sundown if I don’t find anything._

_I hope you won’t be mad at me either. I wanted to take you with me, but I thought I’d better not, just to be safe; if it all goes to shit, then I’ve at least lived a few years longer than you have. If something bad does happen to me, I hereby leave all of my personal belongings to you, including my turntable and every single one of my records. It’s a poor trade for still having your excellent big brother around, I know… but hey, it’s something._

_Love ya,_

_M._

Baekhyun had run down to the pier as soon as he’d found the note, arriving just in time to see the little boat already some distance away, rushing forth to kiss the cloudless sky, a trail of white foam laid out behind her like a bride’s train. But by the day’s end, there was no sign of The Day's End, and no sign of Minseok — or, for that matter, their mother.

Afterwards, it had just been Baekhyun and his father left in an otherwise empty house. The silence had taken some getting used to; without his mother's airy voice or his brother's constant singing, it was eerily quiet, and often there was only the sound of the wind howling through the halls whenever a window or door was left open. Mr. Kim was a well-meaning man, but too tangled up in his own grief to pay much attention to his one remaining son; anyway, Baekhyun wasn't a blood son, but a foundling the Kim family had taken in when he was small. Soon he began to detect a trace of underlying resentment -- a _‘why couldn't it have been you instead of them’_ sort of feeling -- and so from then on he had done his best to keep out of the way.

They had quickly fallen into a sort of routine, where each man silently understood his role, but neither ever spoke about it. In fact, they hardly spoke at all; like many of his fellow fishermen, Mr. Kim had once been full to the brim with tales and anecdotes, but all of a sudden he had become mute. With new sorrows to drown, he began to spend more time at the pub down the street, and sometime after midnight he would stagger into the house, as pickled as a herring, and go right to sleep wherever he landed. Every morning, Baekhyun woke him with a gentle nudge of his foot, before wordlessly shoving a plate of something vaguely edible at him across the kitchen table. They would go their separate ways for the day, come home, sleep, and repeat the process all over again.

This carried on for a few years, until Mr. Kim met his untimely end while they were out on a father-son fishing trip — during which he was pulled into the sea and dragged away by an enormous legendary blue marlin, known all over Ayr Island as The Blue Demon, right in front of a helpless Baekhyun. Afterwards, Baekhyun had searched for him everywhere (his father, not the marlin), but to no avail. Like his wife and son before him, Mr. Kim’s body was never recovered, and then Baekhyun was left in the family home all by himself.

"Should've just let Bluey win. Bluey always wins," he'd whispered sadly at the freshly-dug grave, before throwing the customary handful of dirt into it. Like the two plots on either side, it held an empty casket.

 

 

 

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Now, seven years after his family members first began disappearing, Baekhyun still came out to sit at the end of the pier almost daily, half expecting a glimpse of The Day’s End to appear from beyond the horizon -- although his hopes had since been whittled down somewhat.

While he sat there, he looked down at his feet dangling above the water. He could remember his mother once standing with him and Minseok on the beach, shortly before she went missing, holding both their hands while the waves came up and lapped at their bare toes. There had been something wistful in her expression when she stared out at the sea that day, but when she turned to each of her sons, her eyes were full of warmth.

"My darlings, it’s okay to be sad sometimes. In fact, it’s normal to feel like that. So don’t try to push it away.” Wearing a gentle smile, she’d picked up a stick, using it to write something Baekhyun could no longer remember onto the wet sand along the shoreline. “Write all the things that hurt you into the sand. Then, when the tide comes in, let it wash over them... and know that whatever you are going through right now, it will eventually recede.”

Baekhyun had tried this since then, and it hadn't really worked for him. But he still wanted to believe that she was right.

Shielding his eyes from the sun, he exhaled a sigh, got to his feet and headed back along the length of the pier, stepping over any planks that looked slightly rotten. He had a shift at the general store starting in half an hour, and he couldn’t afford to be late. He was lucky to have a job in the first place, and if he lost it, then it was unlikely that anyone would be falling over themselves to offer him another one.

He walked into the shop a little later, expecting to spend the day stacking cabbages or something, but as soon the proprietor saw him, he turned toward Baekhyun with his hands clasped together. He wore a smile that was a little too forced for comfort. “Ah, Baekhyun, you’re here... I have a special favour to ask of you. Would you mind making the trip out to Redhill Island today? The lighthouse keeper's supplies and mail urgently need to be dropped off.”

Baekhyun frowned at the unexpected request. “Doesn’t some other guy usually do that..?”

“Well, that’s the thing — that ‘some other guy’ has called in sick, and it looks like he won’t be able to go,” Mr. Lee said. “With the way the weather was last week, the delivery's already overdue, and the keeper’s running low on kerosene. If he runs out completely, he won’t be able to light the lamp. So they need someone who’s good with a boat to take over on short notice, and I’ve offered up your services. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I mean, I guess I could—” Baekhyun said, hesitating, but Mr. Lee didn’t let him finish.

“Wonderful! I’ve already called Sunny, she can come in and cover for you here.”

Though Baekhyun no longer had any surviving family members, one of the things he _had_ been left with was Little Fearless, his father’s old fishing boat. He wasn't a stranger to being out on the water, even in rougher seas; that was a situation he could handle. But the Redhill Island lighthouse and its infamous keeper were another story.

"Okay,” he said, holding back a sigh. “Well, if you have the goods to hand over to me, I'll make my way over there now.” It would be a change of scenery, at least.

"Good lad.” Mr. Lee disappeared into the back of the shop and came back with a large plywood crate, which he handed over to Baekhyun. It was heavier than it looked, and Baekhyun struggled a little under the weight of it.

"I took the liberty of picking up the keeper's mail from the post office for you, so no need to go past there on your way. Kyungsoo from the hardware store will meet you down at the marina, and give you another crate with the kerosene in it, and a few other supplies.” Mr. Lee eyed Baekhyun over the top of his half-moon spectacles. "I'd set out as soon as possible, if I were you, while the weather's still agreeable. We all know what it's like around here: four seasons in one day and all that.”

With one last parting nod aimed at Mr. Lee, Baekhyun stumbled out of the door with his cargo. He was glad to at least avoid a visit to the post office, since the woman who ran it always made a face at him like she was sucking a lemon. She wasn't the only one who looked at Baekhyun oddly; it had been going on as long as he could remember, but after the loss of his family he noticed it a lot more. The townspeople of Castlereagh were uncomplicated, straightforward folk: those who were not fishermen were the offspring of fishermen, who in their turn were the sons of local whalers and sealers, before both industries had been shut down by dwindling supply and the efforts of gung-ho environmentalists. But they were also prone to superstition, and while one mysterious disappearance within a family could be overlooked — maybe even two, under the right circumstances — three was enough to set tongues wagging. Now Baekhyun had grown used to people treating him with wary contempt, and he no longer thought too much of it; if they really were talking about him behind his back, then it only meant they had nothing better to do with their time.

His mind returned to the task at hand. He had been out near Redhill Island before, on the boat with his brother and father, when they used to spend idyllic summer days fishing together in the surrounding waters. But he had been on the island itself only once, and he was so young at the time that he couldn’t remember it. It was a strange place; the main thing that had struck him about it during those family fishing trips was the number of seals sunning themselves on the beach. Sometimes the sand would be thick with squirming piles of them, all huddled together. He remembered them being curious, playful creatures: swimming out to the boat and diving in and out of the water around it, hoping to be treated with a morsel of bait fish for their trouble. Occasionally one of the cheekier ones would flip itself right inside the boat to get at the bait bucket, and Mr. Kim would have to get the spare oar he kept on hand for scooping them back out again, swearing at them under his breath. He hadn't liked the seals very much, but the young Baekhyun and Minseok thought they were funny.

His head still swirling with memories, Baekhyun carried the supply crate down to the marina where Little Fearless was moored, and there he met Kyungsoo, who helped him load everything into the boat.

“So you got roped into going out there, huh.” Kyungsoo was one of the few people in town that Baekhyun was friendly with. He was decent enough, but today he had a mischievous glint in his eye. “Good luck with that.”

“I probably won’t even see him,” Baekhyun said, with a wave of dismissal. “I’ll bet he sleeps during the day.”

“Yeah, probably. I was talking to the guy who normally captains the supply boat not too long ago, you know — bumped into him at the pub. Reckons he’s never seen the keeper either; he just knocks at the door, never gets an answer, and then leaves the goods near the doorstep.” Kyungsoo leaned against a wooden post, casually folding his arms. “But he did say he thought he once saw the old bastard standing up in the lantern room at the top of the tower, apparently gazing out at the ocean. Just the silhouette of him. Too far away to see much, mind you… all he could say with any certainty was that he looked like he was tall.”

“Alright. Well, I appreciate the useless information, but I should probably head off,” Baekhyun said good-naturedly. He didn’t have any particular interest in meeting the keeper anyway; there was only a vague curiosity, and nothing more. He reached out to shake Kyungsoo’s hand. “Thanks again for your help.”

“No problem. Bon voyage.” Kyungsoo waved him off, and then turned away to walk back along the wharf.

It was good that Little Fearless was getting some use today, at least. Mostly she just sat there, since Baekhyun never really had the inclination to go out boating or fishing on his own. Though it broke his heart a little to think about it, the cost to moor the boat wasn’t cheap, and because he had nowhere else to keep her, he would probably have to sell her sooner or later. But she still went well enough, and the wheel turned smoothly as he guided her through the water. Conditions were decent, and he predicted it would take only around half an hour to get there. As he pulled out past the breakwater with the cool wind blowing sea-spray into his face, he wondered why he didn’t take the boat out more often.

And then he answered his own question. She was anchored by too many memories; that was the problem.

After some time, the lump of rock that was Redhill Island came into view. It looked about the size of a pebble from afar, and Baekhyun could see the lighthouse sticking up out of the top of it, looking more like a matchstick with its little red cap than an imposing tower. The island was surrounded by shallow waters and a lurking sprawl of coral reefs, on which a few unfortunate vessels had run aground in days gone by; Baekhyun knew this, and had been near it enough times to be aware of the hidden dangers. Still, he had a soft spot for the lighthouse itself. Sometimes on a clear night, when he stood in front of his bedroom window, he would be able to see it — a flashing pinprick of light in the distance. He would wonder who else might be standing at their window at that same moment, seeing the same tiny dot he could see, and somehow the thought always made him feel less alone.

As for the keeper who lived there, he had no idea what to think about the man. He was shrouded in mystery — a known recluse, he apparently never left Redhill Island, and apart from the seals, he was its only permanent inhabitant. No one in Castlereagh seemed to know much about him, or where he was from, or even what he looked like. Occasionally Baekhyun wondered if he'd ever walked right past the keeper at some point in time, without knowing who he was.

He couldn’t help feeling sorry for the man sometimes, because he was someone else that the people in town liked to whisper about. It had something to do with the previous head keeper suddenly going missing, right before the current one had taken up his post, and being the object of other people’s suspicions was something Baekhyun knew the pain of all too well. Surely it was a lonesome existence — being the only person on a big rock, surrounded on all sides by miles of water, with all the people in the nearest town too afraid to go near you, but still whispering mean things about you from afar.

Now that he was nearly at the island, the weather didn't look as promising as it had before. The water was only slightly choppy, but the sky was beginning to turn grey, and he wondered if it would rain soon. He'd checked the weather earlier, and the forecast hadn't mentioned anything other than a spell of light rain in the evening, which he could be back early enough to beat. Those heavy clouds gathering in the distance seemed ominous, though, and for a second or two, a knotted feeling in his gut told him that perhaps he shouldn’t have agreed to this. But then the lighthouse keeper wouldn’t get his provisions, and what Mr. Lee had said earlier left Baekhyun with a twinge of guilt: weird recluse or not, the man still needed food to eat, and enough kerosene to light the lantern. He resolved to quickly do this one-time duty, and then he would leave for home as soon as he could.

 

 

 

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

A gathering of fur seals lazing around on the sand eyed Baekhyun as he tied Little Fearless up to the island’s tiny jetty. He’d arrived at a small stretch of sandy beach, with a clear path leading out of it that was lined on either side by rows of flaking white wooden fencing. The path wound its way between rocks and scrubby bushland, leading up to where he could see the red-striped tower of the lighthouse, looking down on him haughtily from up on the clifftop.

The crates were heavy, and the drop-off had to be done in two trips from the boat, but it was otherwise uneventful. After he’d carried the crates up, he knocked loudly on the front door, and then left them both next to the doorstep when no one came to receive him. Looking up at the lantern room near the top of the tower, he could see no movement through the glass. He looked around while he headed back down the path towards the beach, and saw other signs of habitation. There were a number of potted flowering plants. A vegetable garden planted inside an old boat, fenced off with salt-rusted chicken wire. A length of cord strung up between two wooden posts, which he took to be a makeshift clothesline. There was also a chicken coop, and a small wooden shed standing a little way off — probably an outdoor dunny — and a big brass bell with a frayed rope dangling from it, which Baekhyun didn’t know the purpose of.

What would it be like to live here? Now that he was seeing it up close, he thought it mightn't be so bad. If nothing else, the keeper had an incredible view of the ocean, and no one around to bother him.

Baekhyun walked along the beach on his way back to the jetty, his boots sinking into the wet sand. His skin felt sticky from the salt wind. He knew that he had been found somewhere along that very same beach, at least according to the story his father had told him. He had been an infant when Mr. Kim, who was visiting the island during a solo fishing trip, had spotted him there, wrapped up in a dirty blue knitted blanket, and being nursed by a fur seal. The sight of the animal itself was of course nothing unusual; a seal nursing a human child was another thing altogether. Baekhyun had heard the story dramatically retold by his father over many family dinners, always with wild hand gestures that threatened to send the crockery flying from the table, earning a glare or two from Mrs. Kim — about how he’d found Baekhyun latched on to a teat, suckling away like it was the last milk left on earth. Stunned by what he saw, Mr. Kim had advanced slowly and carefully with the aim of rescuing the child. When the seal lunged at him in defence, he had picked up a bit of driftwood and clobbered her over the head with it, before running away with little Baekhyun in his arms.

“You didn’t kill, her did you?” a younger Baekhyun had asked, wide-eyed, during one of his father’s retellings of the tale.

“No, son, not intentionally; it’s bad luck to kill a seal,” was his father’s reply. “Kopakonan the seal-woman will get you good for that, salty sea-bitch that she is. But I’m afraid I knocked your little wet-nurse out cold, so she might’ve died later on, poor creature. I didn’t hang around long enough to find out.”

Baekhyun could still recall clearly the misty look in his father's eyes as he spoke. “You know, they say that the selkies like to visit Redhill Island. Now a selkie is a kind of magical seal that can come out of the water, take off its sealskin, and walk around on land like a person. And if you take a selkie’s skin from him and hide it somewhere, then he’s forced to stay on land as a human, and he can't return until you give him his skin back.” He would always lean back against his chair, thoughtfully chewing the wooden pipe he liked to smoke after meals. “But it's not good for a selkie to be bound to the land like that; they can live on land for quite a while, but they can get sick with grief if they don't eventually go back where they belong. It can even kill them. And as soon as the whisper of an opportunity comes for them to return home, they’ll grab it and run. Doesn’t matter how much they may grow to love a human companion, they’ll give it all up for the love of the sea.”

Baekhyun remembered asking his father if he’d ever seen a selkie himself, but the answer he got wasn’t clear. “I’ve seen lots of seals, but I can't say for sure that they were selkies. A selkie in its seal form looks just like a regular seal, and there's only certain times that they can become people. Some say it's at midsummer, some say it's midwinter... others will tell you it’s the thirteenth day of the new year, or during the seventh stream, or some other date. Some people believe they’re the reincarnated souls of those who’ve been lost at sea. People believe all sorts of things."

The young Baekhyun had been puzzled by this. “If a selkie is someone who has already drowned, then how can he die again?”

“I don't know how it all works. If a selkie dies, I suppose he goes to whatever comes after this life, just like anyone else. It’s a sort of limbo state, I guess you could call it; a punishment from Mother Ocean for being proud and stupid enough to think we can conquer her.” Baekhyun remembered how his father’s face had crinkled as he smiled, and the feeling of a big warm hand on his shoulder, kind but dismissive. It meant there was a limit to the number of questions he could ask on the subject. “But that’s all I can tell you; there are a lot of stories out there, and no two of them are the same. At the end of the day, everyone’s got their own version of the tale to tell. You can listen to them all, but what you choose to believe is up to you.”

 

Distracted by these memories, Baekhyun was about to head back to the boat when he felt something cold hit the top of his head, snapping him out of his daydreams. Fat drops of rain began to fall, spotting the sand all around him. A blinding flash in the sky made him jump. He waited for the thunder, counting the seconds between to judge how close the storm was, and had no time to prepare himself for the deafening crack; he was so surprised he nearly fell backwards.

Turning back toward the lighthouse, he looked up and saw the weather vane on top swinging around wildly in the gale. Where had the storm even come from? There was no way he could safely go back to Ayr in these conditions. He knew he had a few emergency supplies in the boat: an old tent, life vests, first aid kit, a torch, water and dried food. It was a practice Mr. Kim had always drilled into both him and Minseok, and Baekhyun was grateful for it now. He thought about putting the tent up on the beach, but it seemed unlikely to hold up with the wind. Praying that Little Fearless would suffer no damage in the storm, he took the torch with him and went off to find shelter somewhere.

When the sand ended, he walked quickly along the rocks until he found a cave tunnelling into the side of the cliff. He ventured inside its dank, stinking mouth, covering his nose with one hand, treading carefully. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, and when he switched the torch on, he saw it — a large sea lion, with something black and white and limp hanging from its mouth. Feathers matted with blood. A little penguin, he realised with horror; it stared back at him with a glassy, lifeless eye.

The sea lion dropped the dead penguin and roared at him. Inhaling sharply, Baekhyun slowly backed away a few steps before turning around and legging it out of the cave. He barely noticed that he’d dropped the torch, but he wouldn’t stop to pick it up. The rain was already bucketing down. There was another flash, followed by a crack of thunder so loud he felt like the sound of it could split him in half. Why had he come to this godforsaken place — and where else could he run to, on an island that was all rocks and scrub and only a handful of trees? Anyway, this was the kind of storm that could turn a tree into matchsticks. Along with the sinking feeling in Baekhyun's gut came the realisation that he had very few options, and none of them were desirable: to sit on the beach and brave the elements, seek out another hopefully unoccupied cave to shelter in, or go up to the lighthouse and beg the reclusive keeper for refuge from the storm.

As though trying to hurry along his decision, the whole sky turned blinding white, and with an embarrassing shriek Baekhyun bolted up the path in the direction of the lighthouse. If he had to choose between certain death in the storm, or possible murder at the hands of the Redhill keeper, then he would take his chances. He had been terrified of storms as a child, and at the age of twenty-one he still hated them. As he ran, he felt something else cold and hard hit him on the head. Hailstones pinged off the ground around him; they nearly tripped him up, rolling around underfoot like white marbles. Saturated with rain, the red barber’s-pole stripes of the lighthouse tower had dulled to the colour of oxblood, but the lantern was now lit up, and it rotated slowly, the beam slicing through the grey sky. Among the dark clouds and freezing rain, it looked warm and inviting.

Baekhyun was soaked to the skin and shivering by the time he got to the front door of the lighthouse, where he noticed that the supply crates had been removed from the doorstep. He rolled up one sodden shirt sleeve and pounded against the wood with a fist, until his hand began to hurt. A part of him desperately wanted the keeper to answer the door, and yet another part of him didn’t. For a while — it felt like at least a minute, maybe longer — nothing happened. He was about to turn away with his heart inside his waterlogged boots when the heavy wooden door was unlatched and pulled open, with such force that he nearly stumbled backwards.

Back on Ayr, Baekhyun had heard all manner of speculation about what the Redhill keeper might look like. A man as tall as a house, some people said. Others said he had a knotted grey beard that twisted and curled like overgrown vines, trailing right down to the ground. There was also talk about a metal hook for a hand, an empty eye socket hidden behind an eyepatch, and a wooden leg, but the man who opened the door to Baekhyun had none of these things. He wore a bright red collared shirt with yellow hibiscus flowers on it, and he was certainly tall, but not inhumanly so. In fact, Baekhyun realised as he took in the man standing before him, the only inhuman thing about the Redhill keeper was his beauty. He wasn’t old and grey-bearded at all, but young — no older than thirty, Baekhyun guessed — and clean-shaven, with soft features, full lips, and black hair falling in tangled waves a couple of inches past his shoulders. There was something wild, too, about the eyes: big and dark they were, and framed by long lashes. He pushed his hair away from his face and peered out at Baekhyun warily from behind the half open door.

"Can I help you?" He had an unusually deep voice, and sounded slightly breathless when he spoke. “I was up in the tower. I almost didn’t hear you knocking over all the commotion out there."

"I came here by boat earlier to deliver your supplies,” Baekhyun said, trying to raise his voice above the thunder and rain. He wrapped his arms around himself to keep from shivering. “And then the storm came out of nowhere, so I couldn't go back. I’d hate to impose on you, but I haven’t really got anywhere else to go.”

The keeper just blinked at him for a moment, without replying. He seemed bewildered by Baekhyun’s presence, and Baekhyun wondered how long it had been since he’d last come face to face with another human being. Finally, to Baekhyun’s relief, he nodded.

“I see. You’d better come in," he said, standing aside to let Baekhyun through the door. "Thanks for making the delivery, too. I’m sorry you were so inconvenienced by the weather; if I’d known it would be this bad, I would have told you to hold off for another day or two. I still have a few days’ worth of fuel left.”

“The weather seemed fine when I left Ayr,” Baekhyun said. “It only turned bad after I arrived.”

“Yes, well, the weather has a habit of being very fickle around here,” the keeper replied gruffly. “You can get storms appearing seemingly out of nowhere, at any time. That’s why it helps to be prepared.”

Without another word, Baekhyun followed him inside the small cottage at the base of the lighthouse tower. It was warm, and looking around he saw a small, cozy kitchen and adjoining living area. Everything was fittingly decorated in a nautical style: on the wall was a ship's wheel, and various maps and seacharts, and a framed needlepoint that read ‘bless this lighthouse’ with a little image of the Redhill tower, bordered by small blue and yellow flowers. There was also a crude wooden hand-carving of a mermaid, her breasts and tail covered with limpet shells. A small shelf mounted to the wall looked as though it had been made of driftwood, and held a collection of books and an old oil lamp. There was a large porthole window above the kitchen sink. Everything was neat and tidy, and smelled faintly of lemon dishwashing detergent.

“You know, I hate to break it to you, but you could be stuck here for a day or two before it'll be safe to go back on the water,” the keeper was saying; he still wasn’t smiling, but he at least looked a little less bemused by Baekhyun’s sudden appearance. “You could be stuck here even longer than that, in fact. But I do have a spare bedroom you can stay in. It’s very basic, but you’ll be comfortable.”

“Oh. Well, thank you very much.” Baekhyun didn’t know what else to say, so he stuck out his hand awkwardly in the keeper’s direction. "I’m Baekhyun, by the way."

The keeper looked at the proffered hand and shook it gingerly. To Baekhyun’s relief, he finally witnessed a tiny hint of a smile. “Chanyeol. Nice to make your acquaintance.”

“Nice to meet you too, Chanyeol.” Baekhyun carefully tested the name out, rolling it around in his mouth. “That’s an unusual name you’ve got.”

“I’m not from around here,” the keeper said, and was abruptly cut off by a faint smashing sound from somewhere in the background, like a heavy object being thrown through a pane of glass. “Oh, flippers,” he muttered, and he turned on his heel, running out of the kitchen and down the corridor.

Not knowing what else to do, Baekhyun followed Chanyeol to the narrow staircase that spiralled upwards around the lighthouse tower, struggling to match his pace. They passed a couple of doors on the way up, but he didn’t get a chance to look inside them. Apart from the storm outside, the only sounds were his and the keeper’s feet pounding against the stone steps, and his own huffing and puffing. He was already breathless, but the keeper seemed to be reasonably fit, and Baekhyun wondered how many times a day he had to go up and down that staircase. He had given up trying to count how many steps there were, but it had to be close to a hundred.

When they finally reached the top of the tower, Chanyeol hurried around the room, checking all the windows, until he found one with a hole smashed through it. There was a metal column in the middle of the room that came out of the floor and disappeared up into the lantern itself; a strange whirring sound suggested that it contained some kind of mechanism that made the light rotate. Baekhyun found himself transfixed by it. He had never been inside a lighthouse before, much less ventured up to the top of one. The lens was huge — a couple of metres tall, at a glance. It was multifaceted, with a number of glass sections that radiated outwards in concentric circles, like a giant jewelled eye.

“Wow.” He couldn’t think of any other words, at least none that could do justice to the breathtaking object before him. There was something mesmerising about it, and the way it reflected prisms of light on his face and all around the room as it turned. He hesitated at first, before allowing himself to walk up to it. "I’ve never seen one of these up close before.”

“Look at the size of that hailstone. We’re lucky it didn’t break the lens,” the keeper said to himself. He bent down to pick up the culprit: a chunk of ice about the size of a cricket ball, which was beginning to melt on the floor. He muttered something else under his breath and stood in front of the windows, staring through them at the chaos outside. Joining him, Baekhyun watched the sky in all its grey-clouded fury, hurling angry bolts of electricity into the sea. Smaller hailstones began to clatter on the metal floor of the gallery outside.

“You know, I’ve seen some killer storms in my day, but not too many like this one.” Chanyeol turned his head to look at Baekhyun with twinkling eyes, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly. "Maybe these are the End Times." He began to whistle an unsettling little tune before facing the window again.

“Won’t you need to fix that hole in the window?” Baekhyun asked.

Chanyeol let out a short honk of laughter. “Fix it with what? I may be a jack of many trades, but I'm no glazier.” He went around to each window and checked them all again, inspecting them individually for any further damage. “Anyway, of course it’ll need to be fixed… just not by me. I'll call up the Board of Lighthouses to report the damage, and then they’ll have to send someone out to repair it. They’ll take their sweet time doing it, too, I’m sure.”

Baekhyun didn't reply. He was still entranced by the rotating beacon in the middle of the room, glowing with warm yellow light.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Chanyeol said. “It’s a first order Chance Brothers lens, built in the late 1880’s.” He was quiet for a moment. “Do you want to have a look inside?”

“I can go in there..?" Baekhyun had noticed a narrow metal ladder leading up inside the lens, and had wondered what it was for.

“Of course. How do you think it gets lit?” Chanyeol smiled wryly. “If you go inside and take a few steps up that ladder, you can stick your head in and have a look.”

Walking over to the lantern, Baekhyun took a couple of steps up the ladder and stood there for a moment, gazing up at the slow-turning glass cage around him. Above him was something that looked like a gas lamp on the end of a metal pipe, glowing softly. “Is that the light up there? It’s not as bright as I thought it would be.”

“That’s called the mantle. It's the part you have to light up,” Chanyeol said, when Baekhyun emerged from inside the lens. “Maybe tomorrow I’ll show you how to light it, if you’re still around then.”

“You light it? As in, with fire..?”

“Yes, with fire,” Chanyeol said, laughing softly at Baekhyun’s expression of surprise. “It’s fuelled by vapourised kerosene. Most lighthouses these days were converted to electric long ago, but this is one of the few remaining that hasn’t. We only have a generator on the island, and an electric lamp that bright would take up quite a bit of power. Until the Board decides it needs an update, we’ll continue to do things the old-fashioned way.”

Chanyeol walked around to the front of the lens, Baekhyun following close behind. “Do you see how the lens is made up of all those smaller pieces of glass, and the way the pieces are all angled differently? How those pieces reflect off each other is what makes it capable of projecting light over such a great distance — even a not-very-bright light like the one you just saw will be magnified significantly. But they don’t make lenses like this anymore, and so it’s priceless, and virtually irreplaceable.That’s why I try to take the best care of it that I possibly can.”

The keeper seemed to be warming to Baekhyun a little, now that he’d had the chance to explain to him some of the mysterious inner workings of his lighthouse home. “Well, that’ll have to do for the time being. The weather seems to have calmed down a bit now. Soon it’ll be time to wind the light up again, or she’ll stop turning,” he said, looking at his watch. It was one of those old-fashioned skeleton ones that needed to be wound up periodically. “Just like my watch here, only the light needs to be done once every hour, so she’s quite a demanding mistress. I’ll have to start on dinner soon, too. What do you fancy?”

It took a moment for Baekhyun to realise what Chanyeol was asking him. He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling shy all of a sudden. “Oh, anything’s fine… please don’t go to any trouble.”

Chanyeol looked at him for a moment, searching his expression. Baekhyun was starting to feel a little uncomfortable at the intensity of his gaze when the keeper finally said, “I went cockling down on the beach early this morning. Collected a whole bucketful of beauties. Maybe I’ll steam them with white wine and garlic, and toss them up with some pasta or something. Provided you’re not averse to shellfish.”

Baekhyun barely had the time to reply before Chanyeol was already making a beeline for the door. He hurried along behind him. “Um, sure. Sounds good.”

He felt a bit useless while Chanyeol prepared the meal. The keeper refused all offers of help at first, only allowing Baekhyun to briefly take over watching the pot on the stove while he went off to wind up the lighthouse's rotating mechanism. The dinner he prepared turned out to be the most delicious meal Baekhyun had eaten in a long time, and he tucked in with relish; he had grown used to cooking for himself and his father — and later, only for himself — but he couldn’t claim to be very good at it.

“Sorry the cockles are a little sandy,” Chanyeol said while they were eating. "Normally I leave them to purge for a while before I cook them, but I didn’t really get the opportunity this time.” He seemed genuinely apologetic about it.

“Don’t be sorry. This is great,” Baekhyun replied, twirling up another forkful of pasta. “You’re a very good cook.”

Chanyeol repaid the compliment with a bashful smile, which he aimed toward his own plate. “Ah, all keepers need their hobbies, or we’d all go mad. Although I suppose cooking is more of a necessary evil than a hobby.”

After that, their dinner conversation was stilted and spare, and Baekhyun noticed that Chanyeol had a habit of leaving long pauses between sentences, during which he would stare into space with a look of curious concentration, as though listening out for something to happen. He would eventually snap out of each little trance with a tiny shake of his head, before lapsing into the next one. Perhaps he didn’t sleep enough, Baekhyun thought.

“I know I’m not the best conversationalist,” Chanyeol said at last, when they’d been sitting in silence for several minutes. “But it’s just that there aren’t usually many people to talk to around here."

“Are you the only one on the island?” Baekhyun ventured to ask, swallowing another mouthful.

“Yes, it’s just me. And now you, of course.” As Chanyeol said this, a shaggy black dog nearly the size of a small pony wandered into the kitchen. It stood next to the table, looking at them both expectantly, its tongue flopping out of its mouth like a slice of corned beef. “And there’s this guy, too, I suppose," he said, nodding toward the dog. "But he doesn’t really say much.”

Baekhyun reached out to let the dog sniff at his hand, and then scratched him behind the ears. “Cute. I’ve never seen such a huge dog before.”

“His name is Stumpy Jim. He was originally trained as a marine rescue dog, but now he’s retired,” Chanyeol said, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “He used to be Just Jim, but he got his tail caught in the front door one day when a gale slammed it shut, and he lost the end of it, hence the nickname. It was quite traumatic, probably more for me than him; he just ran around like nothing was wrong, joyfully flicking blood all over the place -- I was the one who had to clean it up. The house was like a crime scene afterwards.”

After dinner was finished, and the dishes washed and put away — “I like to keep a tight and tidy ship,” Chanyeol explained — Baekhyun was taken up to the room where he was to sleep for the night. The room was about a quarter of the way up the tower, and fairly spartan: just a narrow bed with a barred frame, a small window with an old radiator beneath it and a tiny sink in one corner. But it was clean, and the mattress was comfortable, if a bit saggy in the middle. He wondered if the keeper who had gone missing used to sleep in the bedroom before, and the thought made him shiver a little. But he would dwell on that no longer.

While he settled down in his bed, his thoughts returned to the keeper. It was true that there was something a little off-kilter about him; nothing sinister or frightening, really, but definitely something intriguing, and Baekhyun wanted to find out what it was. He wondered what people back at home would think if they found out he was staying under the same roof as the Redhill keeper, but then he remembered that there wasn’t really anyone left to worry about him anymore, and no one left to answer to. With this last sobering thought, he finally drifted off to sleep.

 

 

 

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Baekhyun woke up early the next morning to a terrible blasting sound coming from outside the lighthouse. It was so loud that he felt it in his bones. The whole building seemed to vibrate with it, but it thankfully only lasted a couple of seconds before it stopped. Relieved, he went back to sleep again, only to be disturbed by another blast a little later.

Until that moment, he had not given much thought to what the end of the world might sound like, but this was surely not far off his imaginings. He groaned and held the pillow over his head, trying to drown it out. When he finally accepted that the noise was not going to let up anytime soon, he got out of bed and dressed himself, then went downstairs with his hands over his ears. He had to go outside to use the outhouse, and without the lighthouse’s stone walls around him to muffle the sound, it gave him a headache. He went back inside a little later, following the smell of coffee to the kitchen. There he found Chanyeol already sitting down, wearing reading glasses and a white cotton dressing gown over a different tropical shirt — a mint green one with pink palm fronds and yellow frangipanis on it, this time. He had one of the newspapers Baekhyun had brought with him, spread out on the table in front of him.

“Morning.” he glanced up at Baekhyun, but only for a second. “How’d you sleep?”

“Not too badly, until now,” Baekhyun said. There was another blast from outside, and he couldn’t help cringing. "What the hell is that noise?”

“Foghorn,” Chanyeol replied. He picked up a blue mug from the table and slurped loudly from it. “Visibility this morning is extremely low, so I had to turn it on. There’s fresh coffee in the pot over on the bench there, clean mugs in the cupboard above the sink — help yourself. I’ll get to making breakfast just as soon as I’ve had a quick read of the paper. I tend to get a little behind on the news out here.”

Baekhyun stood there with both hands clapped over his ears. “How can you stand it? It’s so bloody loud.”

“You don’t have to shout at me,” Chanyeol said with a wry smile, though he didn’t look up. “I can hear you just fine.”

“I’m shouting for my benefit, not yours.” Baekhyun went to pour himself some coffee, and sat down at the table opposite Chanyeol. “I can’t even hear myself think.”

“Sometimes I have to leave the foghorn on for days at a time,” Chanyeol said, “but you sort of get used to it after a while. Just like you get used to sleeping during the day, and not seeing another human being for months on end. If there's one thing living in a lighthouse has taught me, it's that people are very adaptable when push comes to shove. You really can get used to anything.”

“Yeah? Well, I can’t imagine ever getting used to that noise.”

“Oh, but you do… and you don’t even realise it. When Junmyeon, the previous head keeper, was still around, we once had to leave the foghorn on for an entire week. In the end we got so used to it that we kept pausing mid-conversation, like clockwork, every twenty seconds to wait for the next blast. We would keep doing that long after it was turned off, too.” Chanyeol chuckled softly, and paused to take another sip of his coffee. “I probably still do that sometimes, for all I know.”

“And then he disappeared,” Baekhyun said absently. He was mostly talking to himself, but as soon as it slipped out, he regretted saying it.

Chanyeol’s eyes flickered up at Baekhyun, and then his gaze returned to the newspaper in front of him. He made a little sound in the back of his throat, but said nothing.

“I’m sorry.” Baekhyun chewed his lip. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Chanyeol shrugged. “It’s fine. We can’t exactly pretend that it didn’t happen.”

“But… where did he go?”

“I don’t know.” Chanyeol shifted in his seat a little, looking uncomfortable. “I suppose everyone back on Ayr thinks I have something to do with it..?”

Now it was Baekhyun’s turn to feel uncomfortable.

Chanyeol eyed him over the frames of his glasses. “What do they say about me, anyway? Don’t worry, I won’t be offended. I mostly find it amusing.”

“Well, you know.” Baekhyun scratched the back of his neck. “Just… stuff. Nothing worth repeating, really.”

“There’s no need to protect my feelings, Baekhyun.” This was accompanied by another wry smile. “I can handle it. I'm a big boy now."

“Just stuff like… well, that you pushed the last guy off a cliff and then took his position. Or…” Baekhyun paused for a moment, cringing at the thought of what he was about to say. “Or that you’re secretly a cannibal, and you butchered the other keeper and then ate him.”

Chanyeol let out a loud guffaw at that. “I _ate_ him! Now there’s one I haven’t heard before.”

“I’ve also heard rumours that you chopped off his head and threw it to the sharks. And also that you can talk to the seals, and have trained them to attack anyone who dares to come near the island."

Chanyeol looked thoughtful for a moment, and then he flipped the newspaper closed and got up from the table. As soon as he stood up, Baekhyun realised that the tropical-print shirt with the palms and frangipanis was in fact a tropical-print pyjama set, complete with matching pants. He bit his lip to keep from smiling.

“Interesting,” Chanyeol said, in a flat tone that suggested the opposite. He walked over to the refrigerator and pulled the door open, taking out a few eggs, a block of butter and some other ingredients. “And what do you believe, Baekhyun? Which of those tales do you think is true?"

The question caught Baekhyun off guard, and he stumbled a little over his answer. "I… I don’t really know.”

Chanyeol nodded, but didn’t look at him. “Right,” he said quietly. “Well, I’ll get started on breakfast, then, shall I?”

The atmosphere seemed to have soured a little after that, and Baekhyun thought it was best to just keep his mouth shut and enjoy the food Chanyeol had prepared. The omelette he made for breakfast was delicious, and Stumpy Jim lay at Baekhyun’s feet and whined for scraps while they ate together — once again, mostly in awkward silence, although at one point Chanyeol took Baekhyun’s empty coffee cup to go and refill it, and when he handed it back to him, he did so with a smile.

When breakfast was finished, Chanyeol explained to Baekhyun that he had to go up to the watch-room beneath the lantern, where he would man the radio and make his first weather report for the day. He would also report the hailstone damage from the previous night, and check in with the neighbouring lighthouses to ensure all was well. Baekhyun sat at the table and read the paper while he waited, although the sound of the foghorn made it difficult to retain anything he read for longer than a few seconds. Stumpy Jim dozed at his feet, flicking his stumpy tail around in his sleep. Altogether it was a comfortable mood, and he was glad he had made the decision to ask the keeper for shelter after all. Where would he be now if he hadn’t? Probably in a cave somewhere, he thought, shivering and terrified. Or perhaps eaten by the sea lion.

After some time, Chanyeol came back downstairs again, wearing a grim expression. “Now, don’t shoot the messenger, but with the forecast being the way it is, I really don’t recommend you leaving the island just yet. Especially not when it’s this foggy. Although I’m hoping that will clear up later in the day.”

Baekhyun thought about his empty house back in Castlereagh, and how few people were probably missing him right now. “How long do you think I should wait it out?”

“It's hard to say, exactly, but my guess is another day or two,” Chanyeol said. “I know I can’t make you stay against your will, but I’d really hate for something to happen to you on the journey back, and I can’t leave the lighthouse unattended to accompany you. You’ll be safer here, and it’s really no trouble for you to stay.”

Baekhyun nodded. “I guess I’ll have to impose on your hospitality for a little longer then.” He folded the newspaper in half and pushed it aside. “In that case, if there’s anything I can assist you with while I’m here, I’d be glad to help you out. Might as well get the full experience; it’s not every day you get stranded in a lighthouse on a remote island.”

Chanyeol smiled at him. “We’ll see what we can find for you to do.”

 

 

 

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Baekhyun didn’t know what to expect when he offered himself up to help out. Whatever it was, he hadn’t counted on the amount of cleaning that was apparently involved in keeping a lighthouse. He had always pictured lighthouse-keeping as a romantic, noble sort of vocation, one that meant a lot of waiting around for not very much to happen. The lighthouse keeper would have plenty of time to idle about writing letters or journal entries, or penning poetry about love and nature, perhaps even painting a watercolour or two of the landscape that surrounded him. There was a degree of this, Chanyeol explained — all the while chuckling at Baekhyun’s naivety — but the only free time he really had was during his overnight watch, when he would adopt all manner of pastimes to keep himself from nodding off on the job.

During the day, on the other hand, there were usually too many other things to get done, like cleaning the windows of the lantern room, and wiping down all the prisms of the lens — “yes, every single one,” Chanyeol added for emphasis — and polishing all the brass-work, and making sure all the lighthouse mechanisms were running smoothly. He was also required to make four weather reports per day, check in with all the neighbouring light-stations regularly, fill out the keeper’s log-book, and communicate via radio with any larger ships that might be passing by the island.

“Seriously, when do you ever sleep?” Baekhyun asked, dumbfounded; the more he learned about Chanyeol’s never-ending to-do list, the more it seemed an impossible job for one man to do on his own.

“I can usually squeeze in four or five hours of shut-eye in the afternoon, if I get all my other tasks done in the morning,” Chanyeol explained. “During winter, when the daytime hours are shorter, the time in which I need to supervise the light is obviously longer. So I tend to get a bit less sleep then.”

“Only four hours…” Baekhyun shuddered at the thought. “I’d go around the bend if it was me.”

“Well, like everything else, you just get used to it after a while,” Chanyeol said. He was washing down the lantern windows with a sponge on the end of a long handle, while Baekhyun had been allocated the delicate job of polishing the brass frame supporting the lens.

“So where are you from, anyway?” Something about polishing the brass-work was very satisfying, Baekhyun thought — almost therapeutic — though he wondered if he would still feel that way about it if he had to do the same thing all the time. “Are you from Castlereagh too?”

“No,” Chanyeol replied. “I’m not from Ayr at all.”

“Oh. Where, then?”

It took Chanyeol a moment to reply. “Probably nowhere you’ve heard of.”

Baekhyun didn’t know whether to ask where that might be; perhaps Chanyeol was a mainlander, he thought. But it seemed like he didn’t really want to talk about it. Baekhyun resisted the urge to probe him further.

“I do apologise that you’re stuck helping me with the cleaning, but cleaning does form the bulk of maintenance work at a lighthouse,” Chanyeol said, and Baekhyun welcomed the change of subject. “Occasionally someone from the Board will come out to check that everything’s being kept clean and in good working order, and often the only notice you’ll get is when you spot their boat coming over in the distance. Which is usually only just enough time to get a rag out and give the brass a bit of a polish, if you’re lucky. So I try to get in the habit of doing it regularly, to keep myself from being caught with my pants down, so to speak.”

“Sounds tough,” Baekhyun said.

“Oh, I don’t mind so much anymore. It keeps me fit. Keeps me on my toes.”

“How many other lighthouses have you worked on?”

“Only this one. But I’ve been here for quite a while now. Around six years, I think… I’m starting to lose track.” Chanyeol paused for a moment to dip his sponge into the bucket of soapy water at his feet, leaning the handle against the window. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of one hand and pulled an elastic band from his shirt pocket, which he used to tie back his hair. “I just sort of ended up here, and now I can’t really picture myself anywhere else. Normally a keeper might be moved around between any number of lighthouses by the Board, but they always seem to have trouble finding other people willing to serve here, and so I suppose I've been stationed here indefinitely.”

“Because of all the rumours?” Baekhyun asked cautiously.

Chanyeol shrugged. “Maybe… I don't know. What other people talk about isn’t my concern. Anyway, I suppose this isn’t the most family-friendly environment for keepers with wives and children. But for someone like me who’s alone, well, it suits me just fine.”

“And you don’t ever get bored, or lonely..?”

Chanyeol laughed good-naturedly at the suggestion. “I don’t have the time to be either of those things. I barely have the time to sleep properly.” Then, as though wanting to change the subject again, he said in a quiet voice, “I should probably do the outside of the windows, too, after I finish in here. Can’t let the salt build up too much… it obscures the clarity of the light.” He seemed like he didn’t want to talk anymore, and so Baekhyun left him to it, concentrating on his own job in silence.

“I do hope the weather clears up soon, though, for your sake,” Chanyeol said, after they’d been quiet for some time. “It looks like tomorrow will be better, so you might be alright to go home then. I’m sure you have a much more exciting life waiting for you over on Ayr. And lots of people who are worried about you, no doubt.”

Baekhyun could have easily refuted this, but he chose not to.

 

 

 

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

After lunch, Chanyeol went to his bedroom to catch his precious few hours of sleep. Left to his own devices, Baekhyun took a walk around the island, familiarising himself with what would probably be his home for the next day or two. The fog had cleared up, and so Chanyeol had blessedly turned off the awful foghorn, but it was quite crisp outside. At one end of the island, where the highest point bent down sharply into steep cliffs, he came across a tiny graveyard with a couple of tombstones, so old and wind-beaten that the engravings were too worn away to be legible. But the graves themselves were neat and tidy, laid with small hand-woven wreaths of flowers, the grass clipped short and free of any weeds.

Baekhyun stood there for a while, looking down at the graves in sombre silence. It moved him, knowing that Chanyeol clearly took the time to tend the resting places of these long-dead and probably long-forgotten people. It also made him feel guilty that the graves of his own family members had not been visited in some time, and must have become overgrown and unkempt in his absence. He made a mental note to visit them when he returned to Ayr.

Later that evening, he collapsed onto his tiny bed, exhausted. He was about to fall asleep when there was a knock at the bedroom door, so soft he just barely heard it. “Come in,” he called out.

The door slowly creaked open, and he saw Chanyeol’s silhouette in the doorway. “I’m about to go up and start the night watch. Just thought I’d come and say goodnight.”

“Okay,” Baekhyun replied. He yawned in the middle of returning Chanyeol’s goodnight, and it all got swallowed up in the yawn.

Chanyeol laughed softly. “You must be tired. I’ll leave you in peace.” He began to pull the door closed, and then hesitated for a moment. “Thank you for all your help today, Baekhyun. You worked hard, and I greatly appreciate it.” Having said this, he gently closed the door.

 

 

 

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

The next day, as per Chanyeol’s prediction, the weather was fine again. Baekhyun found himself almost disappointed to see through the window that the sky was clear, the sun shining. Only a few cottony wisps of cloud. They were perfectly good conditions for him to make the solitary journey back to Ayr.

And was there any way he could delay his return, he wondered, as he lay there in the tiny spare bed, looking up at the flaking paint peeling away from the ceiling. Chanyeol’s comment from the day before had got him thinking — what _was_ he going back to, exactly? And was home even home to him anymore, when the only people who’d made it feel that way had left him long ago? Chanyeol, as isolated as he was, belonged somewhere, Baekhyun realised; he had a purpose here on Redhill, a role that he considered worthy of dedicating his life to. Baekhyun couldn’t help envying him that.

“Have you enjoyed your time here?” Chanyeol asked later that morning, while he walked Baekhyun down to where Little Fearless was still tied to the end of the jetty.

“Yes, very much,” Baekhyun said. “It’s been good fun.”

Chanyeol stood there for a moment with his hands in his trouser pockets, rocking back and forth slightly on his heels. Today's tropical shirt was a pale aqua blue with pink hibiscus flowers on it -- just how many tropical shirts did he have? "And when you go back home, what’s waiting for you?” he asked.

Baekhyun shrugged. “Nothing special… just a job I don’t particularly care about. And that’s it, really.”

Chanyeol’s brow furrowed. “No family at home?”

“No,” Baekhyun said quietly, “there’s no one waiting for me. I live alone.”

“And you don’t have any future plans? Nothing you wish to do..?”

Baekhyun thought about it for a moment. As soon as he could scrape together enough money, his grand plan had always been to leave Ayr for the mainland, although what he would do when he got there was the part he hadn't figured out yet. “I’m not sure,” he said at last. “I haven’t really thought too much about what I want from life.”

Chanyeol looked down at him with a thoughtful expression. “Well, I suppose that’s only natural. You’re still young, after all.” He was quiet for a while, and then he added, “I’m just asking because I could probably get you a job here as an assistant keeper, if you’re interested. I mean, if this is something you’d like to do.”

“Me?” Baekhyun asked, raising his eyebrows.

Chanyeol nodded. “I know you were only helping me out for a day or two, but you did a good job,” he said. “And although I’ve grown used to it now, it’s still hard doing everything on my own. I know it's a lot to consider because of the location, but if it’s any incentive, offshore assignments like this one tend to pay better because of the isolation; it’s not just anyone who can handle such an existence.” He smiled. “It takes someone… well, someone special, I guess you could say.”

“I suppose I hadn’t really thought about it,” Baekhyun said. This was a lie — he _had_ thought about it, but he hadn’t really entertained the thought for too long. The possibility had seemed too remote; just a silly little daydream that he’d flirted with for a minute or two before flicking it away.

“I would understand if you didn’t want to, so don’t feel pressured or anything. But I think you’d be good at it. And you might enjoy it, too,” Chanyeol said. “The Board’s been trying to find an assistant keeper for a while now, and people haven’t exactly been very forthcoming with their applications. Which is understandable, given what some people might have been saying about this island. And, I suppose, about me.”

Baekhyun was about to step down into the boat, but he stopped and turned around to look at Chanyeol. “What really happened to Junmyeon, anyway?” he asked. “Because if I’m going to consider moving out here, then I should at least know the full story.”

Chanyeol looked back at Baekhyun with a pinched expression. Then he sighed and said, “there isn’t as much of a story to it as you’d think. He went out rock-fishing one day, and then he never showed up for his evening shift. I never saw him again. All I can guess is that a rogue wave came and swept him away.”

“Oh,” Baekhyun whispered. He’d heard a number of stories about how the former head keeper had met his end, and though nature had a hand in none of them, Chanyeol’s version of the story seemed perfectly plausible. “I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”

Chanyeol shrugged. “I reported his disappearance when he still hadn’t shown up the next morning, and they sent a few men out to investigate, but they couldn’t find traces of him anywhere. I suppose the Ayr islanders have every right to be suspicious of me, but I didn’t kill him. There was no reason for me to kill him.”

Baekhyun looked at Chanyeol for a long time, studying his expression. “I believe you,” he said at last.

Chanyeol looked surprised at this. “You do..?”

Baekhyun nodded. As much as he had no way to know for sure, it was difficult to imagine someone as mild-mannered as Chanyeol murdering another person in cold blood. Chanyeol and the Redhill keeper he’d heard all those rumours about didn’t even seem like they were the same person. He was a little eccentric, perhaps — one would probably have to be, Baekhyun thought, to be suited to that kind of lifestyle — but then Baekhyun was not without his own eccentricities. There was nothing unlawful about being a bit odd.

“I’ll definitely give it some thought,” he said. “About the assistant position, I mean.”

The keeper's unnaturally handsome face seemed to brighten up considerably when he heard this. “Right. Well, just give the Board a call.” Shoving a hand into his pocket to retrieve something, he handed Baekhyun a piece of paper with a phone number scrawled on it and smiled at him. “And when you do, tell them I sent you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**II.**

Chanyeol’s parting words to Baekhyun before he left Redhill had perhaps been a little presumptuous, but then he could be forgiven for it. Baekhyun arrived back to Ayr Island to find the family home as empty and lifeless as it had been when he left it; within a day of his return, he had called up the Board using the number Chanyeol had given him, and was granted an interview at their office in Ayr for the following day. The interview was successful; soon he had settled all his affairs at home, and was ready to make the move.

He hadn’t really expected people to be curious about his time spent at the lighthouse. In fact, he hadn’t really expected anyone to even notice his absence, apart from maybe Taeyeon, who was his closest friend, and Mr. Lee. But word travelled fast in small towns on small islands, where people apparently had little else to talk about, and during his first shift back at the general store, he was inundated with questions from a few nosy old ladies who usually came in to get their groceries.

“So you actually met him?” Mrs. Lim held a hand up to her mouth to keep her voice from travelling, and whispered, “the Redhill keeper..?” 

Baekhyun didn’t know why she felt the need to whisper. It was somewhat unlikely that Chanyeol would hear them talking about him from a distance of ten nautical miles. “Yes,” he said, “I got stranded there during a severe storm while making a delivery, and he was kind enough to let me stay for a couple of days.”

“And he didn't murder you?”

“Well, no, he didn’t murder me.” Baekhyun was starting to get tired of all these ridiculous questions. “I’m right here, aren’t I?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” the old woman said, somewhat impatiently; the fact that Baekhyun was alive and well seemed of little importance to her. “But what did he _look_ like?” 

Baekhyun had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. It had been like this all morning, making it nearly impossible to get anything done. “Well, if you must know… he had a beard made of tentacles, his leg was wooden below the knee, and he smoked a pipe carved from the femur of his last victim.”

Mrs. Lim’s eyes widened. “ _Really?_ ” she said, and actually began to go white with terror at the thought. “Goodness me. How ghastly.”

“No, not really,” Baekhyun said wearily, “he had no beard at all. He was beardless. And he didn’t have a wooden leg, either.”

“No wooden leg, then — what about a wooden hand?” Baekhyun could tell the doddering old thing was desperate for some kind of juicy detail about his time stranded on the island with the keeper. “No? A wooden eye..?”

“Not as far as I could tell.” As soon as he’d finished paper-bagging the old woman’s groceries, Baekhyun folded the top of the bag over and handed it to her, offering her a joyless smile. “Thank you for coming, Mrs. Lim. See you next time.” With a bit of luck, it wouldn’t be anytime soon.

 

The rest of that first week continued more or less in the same vein. By the end of it, the only person whose questions Baekhyun had the patience to answer was Taeyeon. She at least had the good sense not to ask whether the keeper had tried to eat him.

“So what was he really like, then?” she asked, when she came over to visit him one evening — which was actually a few days before he was due to leave for Redhill, but he had been too nervous to tell her, leaving it to the last minute to do so. 

Baekhyun shrugged. “He seemed okay. Quite reserved, but nice enough… nothing sinister about him. I did get a kind of melancholy vibe from him, though. I suppose it must get lonely, being by himself all the time.”

Taeyeon slumped back against the striped corduroy sofa. She pushed her lips out in a pout, blowing her fringe away from her eyes with a puff of air. “He sounds… well, sort of boring, doesn’t he?”

“I’d like to make my time there seem more thrilling than it really was, but it was pretty ordinary,” Baekhyun said. “The storm was the only truly frightening part. But actually, staying at the lighthouse was a lot of fun.” He hesitated. “Which sort of brings me to the other thing I was going to tell you.”

“What other thing?” Taeyeon asked, looking at him expectantly.

“I’ve applied for the position of assistant keeper at the lighthouse,” Baekhyun told her. “Right now, the keeper has to do everything all by himself. And I’m sure he’s doing a very good job of it, but I think he’s starting to struggle with the workload. I enjoyed my time there, so seeing as I don’t really have any other plans right now, I thought I’d put my hand up for the job.”

Taeyeon blinked at him. “You want to be alone on an island,” she said in a flat voice. “With the Redhill keeper.”

“Not you too,” Baekhyun groaned, but as he looked at her, his expression began to soften. “I was with him for two nights — just the two of us, alone, in the middle of the sea. If he really was going to murder me, then he’s already had plenty of opportunity to do it.” He smiled and gave her a friendly punch on the shoulder. “Anyway, since when do you believe in small-town gossip? I thought you were too much of an intellectual for that.”

“Why would you want to live on a tiny island with only one other person?” Taeyeon asked. She looked skeptical. “I feel like most people would go nuts spending too much time in that kind of environment.”

“I’m not most people. And I know it’s a little… remote. But the pay’s decent, my living costs are covered, and there’s always so much to do that I won’t have the time to be bored,” Baekhyun said. “And I think it’d be nice to have a job where I do something a little more exciting than stack shelves and talk to old ladies all day. Anyway, once you go back to uni, you’ll be so busy you won’t even have the time to miss me.”

Taeyeon pouted. “That’s not true.” She sighed and added, “I just don’t want you going anywhere unsafe, that’s all.”

“I get it, Taeng. But I’m all grown up now — I’ll be fine. I’m not the only friend you have, you know.”

Taeyeon’s pout slowly turned into a mischievous little grin. “Maybe… but I’m the only friend _you_ have,” she said, and Baekhyun laughed because he couldn’t argue with that, even if it was only a good-natured jibe on her part.

“Well, if I had to have only one friend in the world,” he said, “then I’m glad it’s you.”

“Same.” She leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “Anyway, if this is what you want to do, then that’s cool with me. Who knows, maybe it’ll be good for you. And I can freak people out by telling them I’m best friends with the _new_ Redhill keeper.”

“Thanks, Taeng. Your blessing means a lot.” Joking aside, Baekhyun really was grateful for her approval; his best friend’s opinion meant a lot to him, and he had been worried about how she would react to the news. He had tried in all earnest to make friends while he was at school — attempting to overcompensate for his weirdness by being chatty, rattling off his unusual life story to whomever he met -- but it hadn’t really worked. It was possible that he just reeked of loneliness and desperation and the need to belong, and after a while of trying to tolerate it, his peers began running off at the first whiff of him. Only Taeyeon had stuck around. She took a liking to Baekhyun, and thought his unusual background was cool. Other kids had made fun of the fact that he was found among animals and adopted, calling him ‘seal boy’ in a jeering sort of way, but she had come along and repurposed the nickname, always saying it with a different tone altogether — a sweet tone, like the kind a child crouching down on the footpath to talk to a stray puppy might use.

Now, thinking about leaving her behind made him sad. She was his only true friend in the world, and now he would hardly get to see her anymore. Sometimes he’d wondered if he could have ever loved her; she was arguably one of the prettiest girls in town, and certainly the prettiest in their grade at school. But he always ended up shaking the thought away almost as soon as it crept inside his head. She didn’t seem to look at him that way either, and when he thought about it, he was relieved. All he needed was a real friend: someone he could trust to always be there in spirit, even if they couldn’t always be with him in a physical sense. Theirs was the kind of friendship that would survive any distance, any length of time. They would come out at the other end of this time spent apart, and be much the same as they went in, or maybe even closer — he was sure of that.

“I’ll miss you,” Taeyeon said before she left his house that night, enveloping Baekhyun in a suffocatingly tight hug. “Make sure you write me, okay?”

“Of course I’ll write you.” Baekhyun grinned at her. “I’m not sure what the postal service is like in the middle of the ocean, though. Maybe I’ll have to send all missives by homing pigeon.”

She grinned back at him and lifted a hand up to his face, affectionately pinching his cheek, as she had a habit of doing. “I’ll try not to worry about you too much,” she said, and then she put on a stern expression. “Be safe. Be sensible. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“I don’t think you’d move to a tiny island in the first place, so it’s a bit late for that,” Baekhyun pointed out.

Taeyeon laughed. “True. Always have to be the odd one out, don’t you, seal boy?”

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

A few days later, with nervous-but-excited butterflies fluttering around inside his stomach, Baekhyun packed everything he’d need into three suitcases; these he loaded inside the boat, ready to make the trip across to Redhill. He wasn’t really sure what to bring with him. Chanyeol had only mentioned a couple of essentials on the phone: sturdy rubber-soled shoes, a waterproof jacket, clothing he didn’t mind getting dirty, and something to entertain himself with during his free time — when and if he had it.

It still hadn’t properly sunk in that he would be working and living with the Redhill keeper. The thought both scared and thrilled him at the same time. In a way, it was a contradiction: he’d wanted to get away from Ayr for a while — had felt stifled and unwanted there — and now he was going somewhere even tinier than the small island he’d lived on ever since he could remember. He would never have even entertained the thought of working on a lighthouse, if the opportunity hadn’t presented itself. But for once his life seemed to be taking some sort of direction -- an exciting one. It left him with a feeling of hope that he hadn’t felt in a long time. 

 

When Baekhyun arrived at the island, he found Chanyeol standing at the end of the jetty, already waiting for him. He smiled and waved when he saw Baekhyun coming. Today’s tropical shirt was so loud that Baekhyun could see him from a mile away, and it made him smile to himself.

“You know, you’d make a good human distress signal, wearing a shirt like that,” he said to Chanyeol as he pulled up alongside the jetty.

“I always say if you can’t go to the tropics, you’ve got to bring the tropics to you.” Chanyeol smiled, leaning over to grab the rope and help Baekhyun tie up his boat. When this was done, Baekhyun handed him the suitcases, one by one, which he put down next to him on the ground. Then he held out a hand, helping Baekhyun step out of the boat.

“What are you doing down here, anyway?” Baekhyun asked. “I figured you’d probably be asleep when I arrived.”

Chanyeol shrugged. “I saw you coming over from up in the tower, so I thought I’d come down and give you a proper welcome.”

The sweetness of the gesture left Baekhyun feeling all warm inside. “That’s very nice of you, giving up your precious sleeping time just to welcome me.”

“Well, with two of us working here, I might actually have a bit more time to do some sleeping now,” Chanyeol said, giving Baekhyun a good-natured pat on the back. He bent down to pick up two of his bags, leaving only the remaining one for Baekhyun to carry himself. 

“Come along,” he said brightly, “there’s a lot for us to get through… no rest for the wicked. You will soon learn the joys of a slow and quiet life — governed by good, wholesome routine, fresh air, and lots of hard work.” He turned to smile at Baekhyun over his shoulder as they made their way up the path leading to the lighthouse. Baekhyun thought he really seemed different to the solemn man who had first opened the door for him on that stormy night. “Life on the lights is not for everyone,” he added, “but for some of us, it can be life-changing. I hope it will be for you, too.”

The first item on the agenda was to learn all the ropes of working on a lighthouse. There were many more ropes than Baekhyun had expected. Having a commercial fisherman for a father, he had picked up plenty of useful skills over the years — how to fish, how to drive a boat, how to rig a sail, how to tie all sorts of knots and repair minor leaks. He was a competent swimmer, and could perform basic first aid when needed. Living alone for the past couple of years had taught him how to keep himself fed and manage a household, even if that household had only consisted of one person. 

Even so, he was wholly unprepared for the full extent of what life on a lighthouse involved; the two days he’d spent on Redhill initially had been but a tiny preview. The lantern room and its contents weren’t the only things that required regular maintenance: the living areas and the grounds surrounding the lighthouse all had to be kept spick and span as well, in case a Board inspector decided to make a surprise visit. There was grass to mow — not a lot of it, but it was there — and the vegetable garden to tend to; meals to be cooked; chickens and a dog to feed; clothing and dishes to be washed -- all of this on top of their regular duties.

Most importantly, there was the light itself. It didn’t take long for Baekhyun to decide that lighting the lamp was his favourite part of the job. “It’s not just a light,” Chanyeol said, the first time he showed Baekhyun how to do it. “I feel like its almost a cliche to call a lighthouse a beacon of hope and safety, but that’s essentially what it is. It helps to protect our friends out at sea from potential harm. That’s why it’s so important that you learn how to do all these things properly, because the first and most crucial rule of being a lighthouse keeper is that the light must never go out during lighting hours. To let such a thing happen is a grievous mistake, and can get you dismissed from your post. And believe me, neighbouring lighthouses will check up on you, so don’t think that you’re protected by the distance. Now, watch everything I do very closely, and feel free to take notes if you like.” 

The first thing Chanyeol did was go around the room, throwing all the blinds up on each of the windows. “Firstly, you need to open all the blinds. We keep these down for most of the day, especially during the warmer months, because the lens is a lot like a giant magnifying glass. That means when strong sunlight shines directly into it, it can be a fire hazard.”

“Yikes,” Baekhyun said. “Have any fires actually started that way?”

Chanyeol nodded. “Yes, although the last recorded incident was many years ago. But you always need to be careful just in case. Now come inside the lens with me, and I’ll show you how to light it up.”

There was a real process to lighting the lamp, as Baekhyun found out, and Chanyeol treated it with such reverence that it almost felt like a religious ritual: something done to appease a higher power. There was something primeval about it — using fire to send a signal out to sea — which he found beautiful and fascinating. 

First Chanyeol showed him how to top up the kerosene; then the air pressure had to be checked regularly, he explained, and pumped up if necessary. The actual lighting part was, in his own words, “like creating a tiny explosion”. When Chanyeol demonstrated this, he told Baekhyun to stand back; he began to turn a small wheel to let just the right amount of gas escape, and then, using the crook of his elbow to protect his face, he lit the mantle with a long candle. There was a roaring sound, and a flash of blue and gold that made Baekhyun jump back a little in fright. He felt the heat of it on his face, and the roaring sound fizzled into a small hiss before fading away altogether. He stood there for a moment in silent awe.

“And let there be light,” Chanyeol said, with a faint but genuine smile. He looked even more beautiful like that, Baekhyun thought, glowing with the light from the lamp. “It may not be the brightest light as we’re seeing it now, but with the tower’s height and the way the lens has been designed to reflect the beam, its range of visibility is around twenty miles. Of course, this is dependent on several factors, like how clear the skies are, and also how high above sea-level the viewer happens to be. But still… not bad.”

Baekhyun whistled in admiration. “Not bad at all.”

“Maybe you can try it next time,” Chanyeol said, as they each made their way down the ladder and out of the lens.

Baekhyun let out a nervous little laugh. “I don’t know if I’d trust myself.”

“You’ll have to do it on your own eventually. But don’t worry, I’ve been doing it on my own for years now, and the worst that’s happened is I’ve singed off my eyebrows a couple of times. You just need to be careful not to let out too much gas, and you’ll be fine.”

“You really know your stuff,” Baekhyun said. “You must really like lighthouses.”

Chanyeol nodded. “I do. I kind of fell into this whole thing unintentionally, a bit like you, but I’ve cultivated a deep respect for it. Lighthouse-keeping as it’s done here on Redhill is a dying art, which makes me sad. But I’ll keep the light burning for as long as I can.” He smiled to himself. “Until the Board comes bashing down the door, ready to smoke me out.”

After the lighting was done, Chanyeol filled Baekhyun in even more about the lighthouse and its history. “You know, back when Castlereagh was a whaling town, they used to burn whale blubber to fuel the light, instead of kerosene.”

Baekhyun shuddered at the thought. “Really? Yuck.” 

“Well, not the blubber itself… they’d render it into whale oil first, and burn that. It was a cleaner fuel than the coal and wood they initially used, and because it didn’t produce all that soot, the keepers didn’t have to wash the windows of the lantern room so often. Then, when the whale population around the island began to decrease notably, the local whaling industry folded, and they began to turn on the seals instead. They were a lot smaller, which meant they were far easier to hunt. But you know what they say in these parts… it’s bad luck to harm a seal. Sort of like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner and the albatross... nothing good can come of it. I’m not normally one for superstition, but that’s one of the few things I’ve always believed in, without question.”

“Why?” Baekhyun asked.

Chanyeol shrugged. “Because of the stories. Around that time, all the tales about people mysteriously disappearing from Ayr and the surrounding islands began to surface. People thought it was because Kopakonan was angry. Do you know who Kopakonan is?”

“I remember my father mentioning her a few times,” Baekhyun said. “She’s an ocean spirit, isn’t she? He used to tell us a lot of folktales.”

Chanyeol nodded. “I suppose she is, sort of… she’s considered to be the mother of all seal-folk. And apparently she was angered by the mass seal-hunting that was going on, and so she vowed that ‘as many men as could join hands around the perimeter of Ayr’ would all perish. Sometime after she made this vow, a number of men from Ayr and the surrounding islands began to disappear… they just vanished off the face of the earth. Meanwhile, others drowned at sea. Supposedly anyone who'd had a hand in hunting the seals fell victim to it first, but the curse did not always discriminate -- sometimes the people who were lost had nothing to do with hunting seals at all. And you still hear about people going missing from time to time, but I suppose all we can do is speculate. It’s so easy to get caught up in myth and legend as a source of comfort, when we have no other way to explain the unexplainable.”

“How do you even know all this stuff?”

“All the original logbooks are still kept up in the watch-room, dating right back to when the lighthouse was first commissioned,” Chanyeol told him. “They’re really fascinating, if you ever have a spare moment to read them. I’ve read each one from cover to cover multiple times, during night-watches when I had nothing better to do, and needed something to keep me awake. If you think lighthouse-keeping is tough now, then you’ll get a glimpse of how hard it really was back in the old days: I remember one poor keeper noting that she had to ring the fog bell by hand for nearly twenty hours until the fog finally cleared, because she couldn’t get the foghorn to work. And some of the entries are quite chilling, too: you have reports of keepers seeing ghosts, and getting injured or dying in tragic accidents -- or vanishing without a trace, in some cases. Junmyeon wasn’t the first, it seems.”

“My mother and elder brother went missing too, when I was fourteen,” Baekhyun said. “They were both lost at sea. And then my father was, too, but that was a few years afterwards.” As soon as he said it, he wondered if it was a good idea to have blurted out his tragic family history like that, and regretted it a little when he saw the look of pity Chanyeol gave him.

“Oh… I didn’t know that.” Chanyeol’s brow furrowed with apparent concern. “I’m sorry to have reminded you of something so painful.”

Baekhyun shook his head. “It’s fine. It was hard at the time, but I can talk about it now.”

“I see.” Chanyeol looked pensive. “What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“My mother went for a swim in the ocean one afternoon, and never came back. When she didn’t return, my brother Minseok went out alone in his sailboat the next morning to look for her. He never came back either, and his boat was never found.”

“And your father..?”

“He drowned when I was nineteen, in an unrelated incident. It was during a fishing trip. I was with him at the time.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Chanyeol said softly.

Baekhyun nodded. “The worst part was that people thought I had something to do with it, since I was there too... but I didn’t. My father was really into big-game fishing, and he was pulled into the water and dragged off by a giant marlin. As unlikely as that might sound, that’s what happened. I can still hardly believe it myself, sometimes.”

Chanyeol was quiet for a moment, and then without warning, he reached over to grab one of Baekhyun’s hands, holding it in his own. Baekhyun was so caught off guard by the gesture that he exhaled sharply in surprise; it was so loud as to be embarrassing, and he could feel from the heat in his face that he had probably turned bright red. He hoped that he was mistaken.

“I know you have no family left, Baekhyun,” Chanyeol said in a gentle voice, giving Baekhyun’s hand a little squeeze. “But you do have me. I’m not sure if that brings you any real comfort right now, but I hope it will one day, even if it takes a bit of time.”

Baekhyun looked down at his hand, wrapped up in Chanyeol’s much larger one, and then he smiled up at him. “Thanks,” he said softly, “I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome.” Chanyeol returned the smile, and Baekhyun couldn’t help the little pang of disappointment he felt when their hands eventually separated. “Anyway, now that our lamp is lit, technically we’re supposed to sit here throughout the night and watch it. I don’t always adhere to that rule; up until now, there’s only been one of me, and if I need to pop outside to use the head or go downstairs and cook dinner, then I go and do it. The only thing I can’t do while the light is lit up is go to sleep; someone always needs to be awake while it’s on. Not only do I need to act very quickly if the light accidentally goes out, but the clockwork mechanism that turns the lamp around needs to be manually wound up with a hand crank once every hour, otherwise it will stop rotating. Speaking of, come over here and I’ll show you how to wind her up.”

The crank that was used to wind up the rotator was much like the handle used for winding down a car window, Baekhyun thought, except a lot bigger. Being made of iron, it was also a lot heavier. His arm began to get tired fairly quickly; he didn’t want Chanyeol to know this, however, so he kept winding it up without complaint. 

“How long do we have to do this for, exactly?” he asked, grunting with the effort.

Chanyeol shrugged. “Just until it’s done. You’ll feel the crank start to resist when it’s been wound enough.”

After that was done, they went downstairs and had dinner together, starting with whelks that Chanyeol had gathered from the rock pools all around the island, sautéed in garlic butter. This was followed by creamy crab and corn soup, with crabs he had also caught himself, using crab pots that he usually left hanging from the jetty.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m in heaven with all this seafood,” Baekhyun said. The soup was so good that he would have slurped it right out of the bowl if it wasn’t so hot, but he had to blow on every spoonful so as not to burn himself.

“You probably won’t be saying that when you realise seafood is pretty much all we eat around here.” Chanyeol laughed softly, and lifted another spoonful of soup to his mouth.

“I don’t know about that. I don’t think I could ever get tired of it.”

“You might get tired of it eventually. Even I get tired of it sometimes. It’s always a good day when the supply boat comes, because then you’ve got meat for a little while. But after that runs out, I’m left with just vegetables and grains… and whatever I can catch, basically.”

“I love everything from the sea,” Baekhyun declared; he leaned back against his chair, happily patting his belly. “Prawns, fish, squid, crab, lobster, octopus, oysters, sea urchin — you name it, I’ll eat it. I guess they don’t call me Seal Boy for nothing.”

“Why do they call you that?” Chanyeol looked up at him, wide-eyed. “You don’t eat seals, do you..?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that.” Baekhyun laughed at the thought, and waved a hand around nonchalantly. “It’s just a stupid nickname I got stuck with at school.”

“Aha.” Chanyeol leaned forward across the table, clasping his hands together. “Care to explain the provenance of that one? I’m intrigued.”

“It’s... kind of a long story.” Baekhyun hesitated; perhaps he’d said too much again. Chanyeol was surprisingly easy to talk to, though, and it made him let things slip unintentionally. There was something about him that made Baekhyun want to pour himself out until he was empty. He never interrupted, or asked questions out of turn; he always seemed so present the whole time. You could see it in his eyes. 

Chanyeol shrugged. “I like long stories,” he said.

Baekhyun sighed. “Alright... I swear this is all true, by the way, so don’t think I’m nuts or anything. Because I’m not.”

“Not yet,” Chanyeol said, and then when Baekhyun glared at him, he let out a nervous little chuckle. “Never mind, I’m just winding you up. Please continue.”

“So the story goes like this…” Baekhyun began, and he let out a long exhale to prepare himself. He hadn’t told anyone his story in a long time, and the thought of doing so now made him nervous. “I was actually adopted by my parents — or found, rather. In fact, my father found me right here, on this island, when I was a baby. I was being nursed by a fur seal when he found me. So, thinking I was in danger, he hit the seal over the head with a piece of driftwood, and then he took me back to Ayr with him, where he and my mother raised me as their own son.” 

He paused, and tried to read Chanyeol’s expression for any sort of reaction, but there was none; he only continued to gaze at Baekhyun thoughtfully, silently prompting him to continue.

“But it’s just that I remember my dad telling me the same thing you said before — that it’s bad luck to harm a seal. And at the time, I wasn’t sure I believed him. Or maybe I was just a bit too young to understand what he really meant by it. And when you mentioned Kopakonan’s revenge, it reminded me that I sometimes used to question if all these bad things happened to my family because we were, well, I don’t know… cursed somehow. Because of what my father did that day.” Baekhyun fell silent for a moment, picking out a few pieces of crab meat in the bottom of his bowl with his spoon. “I mean, they’re all gone, aren’t they?” he continued, in a quiet voice. “I’ve lost my entire family; I was the only one who was spared. And maybe whatever came for them is coming for me too.”

Chanyeol’s eyes flickered with some kind of emotion, though it was so quick that Baekhyun only just managed to catch it.

“What?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “What’s that look for..?”

Chanyeol only shook his head. “Nothing,” he said quietly, “I was just thinking.” He picked up his bowl to drink the rest of his soup, and then set it down upon the table. “Try not to dwell too much on things like that, okay? It won’t do you any good.” He forced a smile, but was mostly quiet as he went about clearing the table, and Baekhyun wondered if something was wrong. 

 

That night he went to bed relatively early, but found he couldn’t get to sleep. Chanyeol had already gone up to the watch-room to sit through the rest of the overnight shift alone. Baekhyun could hear the slow whirring of the lamp rotating, and the faint sound of the ocean outside the lighthouse, but otherwise it was unsettlingly quiet. 

When he’d resigned himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to be sleeping anytime soon, he got out of bed and ventured up the narrow stairs, feeling the cold stone beneath his bare feet. In the watch-room below the turning lantern, he found Chanyeol sitting at his desk, writing something in a journal by lamplight, with Jim asleep on the floor beside him. He turned his head when he heard Baekhyun walk into the room. 

“Oh,” he said, “what are you doing up?”

“I couldn’t get to sleep,” Baekhyun replied. He felt almost naughty about it, like a child waking up in the middle of the night, trying to sneak in bed with his parents.

“Is something wrong? Did you have a bad dream?” Chanyeol's concern was sweet, and it made Baekhyun want to turn his head away so he wouldn't be seen smiling about it. 

“No, nothing like that.” Baekhyun was quiet for a moment. “Do you think maybe I could sit with you for a while?”

Chanyeol looked surprised at first, but then he smiled and nodded. "Of course you can. Please, have a seat.” He gestured towards a second chair against the wall.

Baekhyun sometimes wished Chanyeol would be a bit less formal with him; he was always polite and friendly, but in a way that kept Baekhyun firmly at arm’s length. If they were going to live and work together, he would have to find a way to make the keeper relax around him somehow.

“So what do you do in here, anyway?” he asked. He dragged the chair closer to Chanyeol and sat down. “Besides wait for something to possibly go wrong."

Chanyeol shrugged. “I do whatever I want. Read, write, knit, draw… sometimes I play my guitar, or listen to records. As long as I don’t fall asleep, it doesn’t really matter how I choose to pass the time.”

Baekhyun nodded. “Okay. I brought a book with me, so I’ll try not to bother you.” He opened a copy of Moby Dick that he was reading for the hundredth time, and moved his brother's precious last letter — which he used as a bookmark — to the back of the book.

“What are you reading?” Chanyeol asked, glancing over at the book in Baekhyun's lap.

“Moby Dick. Have you read it?”

Chanyeol scoffed. “Oh, that… I tried to, once, when they sent over a copy from the library. I think I got about a quarter of the way through before I gave up. It was the most dreary thing I’ve ever attempted to read.”

“You didn’t like it..?” Baekhyun didn’t mean to pout, but he couldn’t help it. “It’s one of my all-time favourites.”

“I’ve read instruction manuals that were more exciting,” Chanyeol said. “Far too long; far too boring. Far too many monologues about whales.” His eyes landed on the letter tucked into the back of Baekhyun's book. “What’s that you've got there?”

“This?” Baekhyun pulled the letter out to show him. “It’s a letter from my brother… he left it for me on the day he disappeared. I take it everywhere with me.”

“I see.” Chanyeol went back to scribbling something in his journal. “It’s nice that you keep it with you. I’m sure he would be very touched, if he knew.”

Baekhyun nodded. He appreciated Chanyeol’s attempt to comfort him, even if he was past being comforted by now. He unfolded the letter and handed it over to Chanyeol. “You can read it, if you want.”

“Really?” Chanyeol glanced at the letter, and then at Baekhyun, looking unsure. “Are you sure that’s okay?”

“Yeah, of course. It's fine.”

Chanyeol took the letter from Baekhyun and began to read in silence. Baekhyun watched his eyes flit back and forth across the page. 

"Why'd he call you 'Squish’?” Chanyeol asked, looking up at him over the top of the piece of paper.

“Because when I was a kid I was pretty chubby, and I had these really squishy cheeks that he liked to smush with this hands,” Baekhyun said, smiling at the memory. “And then I guess the name kind of stuck. I didn’t mind it, though. At least it was better than being called seal boy… or worse, blubber boy. I got that sometimes, too.”

Laughing softly, Chanyeol handed the letter back to him. “That’s cute. Thank you for letting me read it, I’m sure it means a lot to you."

Baekhyun nodded. "It does. It's probably the most precious thing I have." He took the letter, folded it in half and slipped it back inside his book. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost it."

“You should take good care of it," Chanyeol said. "I just know if I had something that meaningful, I’d want to put it somewhere safe, rather than fold it inside a battered old copy of Moby Dick.” He made a revolted face after he said this, and Baekhyun couldn't help chuckling at him.

“What have you got against Moby Dick, anyway? It’s a classic.”

“It’s classically awful, is what it is,” Chanyeol said. “But only in terms of reading material. As a natural sedative, it’s second-to-none.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad!” Baekhyun laughed, and began poring through the text for an excerpt. “By the time I’m done with you, you’ll change your mind about it. Come on, here’s a good bit — _‘Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.’_

“Oh dear," Chanyeol said, looking pained. "You're not going to keep quoting at me all night, are you?”

“ _‘And Heaven have mercy on us all — Presbyterians and Pagans alike — for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.’_ ”

“Good grief. Please stop."

“ _‘Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian’_.” Baekhyun said this somberly at first, but the facade cracked within a couple of seconds, and he nearly fell forward off his chair from laughing.

“I wonder if it’s too late to tell the Board I’ve changed my mind about having an assistant keeper,” Chanyeol said witheringly.

“Okay, okay… I’m sorry,” Baekhyun replied. He was still laughing, and finding it difficult to stop. “I’ll stop torturing you now, I promise.”

Chanyeol affected a world-weary look, as though having just returned from a long time at war, but it soon turned into a little smile. “Go on,” he said, waving a hand toward the door. “Off to bed with you.”

Baekhyun did as he was told. He didn’t feel rejected; in fact, he felt content, as though some sort of progress had been made. When he returned to his bedroom, he lay on his stomach on top of the covers and wrote a letter to Taeyeon, and then he read for a little while longer. Through the gap in the curtains, he could see flashes of the light above him as it turned, steady and regular, as though it were the tower’s heartbeat. Comforted by its presence, he put the book down on the floor and went to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**III.**

_Dear Taeng,_

_Here are a couple of fun lighthouse facts for you. Did you know they used to burn whale and seal blubber to light the lamp? Well, they didn’t technically burn the blubber itself... they'd turn it into oil first, but it’s still a pretty disgusting thought. These days, most lighthouses run on electricity, but Redhill is old-school and is still fuelled by kerosene._

_Also, each lighthouse has its own distinctive light ‘character’, so that passing vessels can distinguish it from others nearby. I’d always thought they all just flashed the same way, but they don’t. Some lights flash in their own special patterns, and some are coloured with filters, and others are fixed and don’t flash at all. The Redhill light takes thirty seconds to do a full rotation, so to someone out at sea, that will look like two flashes every minute. Then there’s the tower’s outer appearance — its red stripes — which are known as the ‘day-mark’. This helps ships to recognise it during daylight hours._

_I’ve learnt a lot about lighthouses in my time here so far; Chanyeol seems to know virtually everything on the subject, and has been pumping me full of information. That's his name, by the way — I don't know if I ever mentioned that before. Who would've thought that the Redhill keeper was human and had a name just like the rest of us? I know… it’s unreal._

_Hope all is well over on Planet Earth. I wouldn’t know, it feels like I left it a long time ago._

_Much love,_

_Seal Boy_

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Though it took a period of adjustment, Baekhyun began to get used to life on the island: to the frequent storms, and staying up until sunrise for the night-watch, and never sleeping for longer than five hours at a time. He got used to the sound of the lighthouse lantern rotating all through the night, and even the dreaded blasting of the foghorn — although growing accustomed to it did nothing to make the sound any less terrible. But he supposed it was just one of the many unique things that slotted together, somewhat haphazardly, to make Redhill Island the strange and intriguing place it was.

It took him a little longer to get used to the distance and the isolation, and to only seeing the same person day after day; but he never got tired of Chanyeol, and he was beginning to sense that Chanyeol, after spending so much time alone, perhaps even enjoyed the company as much as he did. He had a few quirks that took some getting used to, like calling certain parts of the lighthouse’s living quarters after their nautical equivalents — the kitchen he referred to as the ‘galley’, the outhouse was the ‘head’, and so on — but he was easy to live with, and they each seemed to know intuitively when to give each other space. 

If anything, Baekhyun sometimes wished Chanyeol would keep to himself a little less. His alone time felt a little too alone. He kept himself occupied by reading and writing letters to Taeyeon, and in the little overlapping spare time they had, Chanyeol began to pass on whatever extra skills he could. He taught Baekhyun how to work the foghorn — a finicky, sorry business that took about half an hour on a good day, during which Baekhyun had to pretend to understand the function of a great many knobs and wheels and gauges, even though he really had no concept of what they were for. Chanyeol also taught him how to bait the crab pots, and the best places to hunt for whelks, and how to make semaphore signals with coloured flags, which was another way to communicate with passing ships in emergency situations. 

This last activity Baekhyun found a particular struggle; it required a degree of coordination that he seemed to lack, and frustratingly a lot of the movements for different letters felt like they were the same. But Chanyeol was adamant that he master it anyway, and on one afternoon a week, he would make Baekhyun stand on a patch of grass behind the lighthouse, where he would watch him practice signalling different letters with the flags to make words. 

Baekhyun disliked semaphore practice almost as much as he disliked trying to work the stupid foghorn. On one such afternoon, he was made to stand there waving his flags around for almost an hour — it seemed like no matter how thorough he tried to be with his actions, Chanyeol would only look up at him from where he sat cross-legged on the grass, wearing a confused frown, and say, “and what was that meant to be..?”

Baekhyun resisted the urge to roll his eyes. It was a warm day, too warm to be prancing about with a pair of flags. He could think of better things to do with his free time. "It was meant to say _'TURN BACK’,_ ” he said.

Chanyeol looked like he was trying not to laugh. "Well, I regret to inform you, but that was not what you just signalled.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Baekhyun dropped the flags onto the ground, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand. "I guess I'll just be leaving all the signalling to you, then, won’t I?”

"Ah, but what if I wasn't around for whatever reason, and the radio wasn't working, and you somehow had to signal an approaching vessel?” Chanyeol had on a smug _I-told-you-so_ kind of expression, which Baekhyun found irritating. “What would you do then?”

Baekhyun made a whiny noise in the back of his throat. “Can’t we just cross that bridge when we come to it? It’s too hot out here to do this right now.”

“I don’t give a blue-footed booby how hot it is, you’re not going anywhere until you get it right.” Chanyeol crossed his arms in front of him. “I’ll sit here all afternoon if I have to.”

It was almost impossible to be annoyed with Chanyeol when he was clearly trying hard to be stern, and yet looked so adorable. He wore a flower crown on his head that day, which he’d woven himself from a few stubborn wild blooms that were willing to grow on their rocky, windswept little isle. Baekhyun let out a frustrated groan and picked the flags up again, ready for another attempt. He muttered each of the letters to himself after signalling them, and to his surprise, this time Chanyeol gave him a round of applause as soon as he was done.

"Perfect! You got it right that time. And it only took you... nineteen tries?” He rolled onto his side on the grass, laughing breathlessly as Baekhyun chucked one flag at him first, and then the other. Baekhyun was surprised by this glimpse of the keeper's playful side, which he often kept hidden, but whenever it surfaced, it was unmistakable. Usually it was just a twinkle of the eye -- his mouth-smiles, genuine and beautiful as they were, were infrequent. His eyes, however, smiled constantly.

Chanyeol always seemed the happiest when he was gardening. He had various pots with flowering plants and succulents, a few trellises with climbers growing on them, and of course the vegetable garden, which he had planted himself inside a wonky little dinghy. The dinghy was something he had attempted to build one day as a personal project, but which had sadly turned out to be not very seaworthy; “I decided it would make a better planter instead,” he explained to Baekhyun. Sometimes Baekhyun liked to watch him as he carefully pruned branches, or went around sprinkling here and there with his rusty watering can. There was something sensual about the way he patted the soil around a little plant with his hands, or caressed the tender petals of a newly opened bud with the tips of his fingers. Baekhyun did not have green thumbs himself, and so he had no idea what Chanyeol was doing, or for what purpose, but it all looked like magic to him.

Perhaps this was how Chanyeol had been able to live alone for so long, he thought. There was love in everything he did, and in turn, he took love back from everything he did.

"I like to make things thrive in places you mightn't expect them to," Chanyeol said, in a voice so quiet that at first Baekhyun thought he was talking to himself. Chanyeol continued to speak this way, but didn't look up at him. "There is beauty to be found everywhere, all different types of it. Joyful beauty, and melancholy beauty… maybe our island has a little more of the melancholy kind." He had called it _our island_ , as though it belonged to the pair of them.

Baekhyun just nodded, and made a noise of agreement to show that he was paying attention. He loved the secret glee he caught on Chanyeol’s face, the evident joy he got from working on his little garden. Baekhyun smiled down at him unknowingly, his eyes fixed on the rosette at the crown of Chanyeol's head, the place from where his hair grew. For a second or two, he had to stifle the impulse to bend down and kiss him there. Lovely six-foot flower-child; how could someone so big be so small and precious at the same time?

_I can't help but look at you tenderly. And where will that get me?_

But then, what difference did it make, he thought. As far as he could tell, he was already wrecked.

He really liked Chanyeol; he had come to realise that. It had happened gradually, and yet, at the same time, he felt like it had happened all at once. It was a warm, flickering feeling like candlelight, fragile but honest. But he liked Chanyeol the most when he wore wildflowers in his hair. During those warmer months, he would wear his hair like that often, weaving strands of it together around the stems of tiny white daisies, or clusters of yellow phebalium that he picked from shrubs growing on the island. He was so practised at it that he could do it entirely by himself, without the assistance of a mirror. Sometimes he playfully tried to put flowers in Baekhyun's hair too, but Baekhyun’s hair was too fine and he wore it too short, and they always fell out before very long. Chanyeol's hair, long and wavy as it was — always a little tangled from the wind and the salt in the air — held every little bud perfectly.

On occasion, when Baekhyun went for a walk during his free afternoons, he would see Chanyeol sitting at the top end of the beach with his knees drawn up to his chest, watching the seals lazing around on the sand. Often he looked wistful, maybe even lonely, like he was daydreaming about better days. Baekhyun also sometimes noticed him standing at the little cemetery up on the hill, looking down at the old graves; often he’d be tending to them, squatting down on his haunches with a pair of secateurs to trim away the overgrown grass and weeds. 

Other times — particularly in the days after a storm had ravaged the island — he would see Chanyeol combing the beach during idle afternoons, collecting pebbles and shells and pieces of cuttlebone, or picking up bits of flotsam that had washed up on the shore. At first he had assumed that Chanyeol wanted to keep the place tidy, but he later learned that he occasionally made strange, abstract sculptures with these found treasures: trussing together old pieces of wood and other detritus with lengths of wire, fishing line or twine, or whatever he could find lying around on the wet sand. “I like to think everything that comes to this island gets a new life — a second chance, if you will,” Chanyeol said, when Baekhyun enquired about this practice. “And it means less junk in the ocean; fewer things for our poor sea-dwelling friends to choke on or get tangled up in.” One of the things he found most often were pieces of broken fishing net, which the fishermen cut from their boats and let fall into the sea as soon as they were worn through. He had mentioned that he was saving them up to make a hammock with, and now whenever Baekhyun found a piece of netting during one of his own wanderings, he would bring it back up to the house for him.

Baekhyun never disturbed Chanyeol during these moments of solitude; there was something peaceful about seeing the keeper going about his business, and he didn’t want to deprive him of that time to be with his own thoughts. Chanyeol never bothered him either, and he cherished his own time alone, anyway. While Chanyeol was off doing his own thing, Baekhyun took to exploring his new island home from one end to the other. He only steered clear of the caves, since the thought of entering them still made him nervous. Sometimes he would take a stroll along the beach with no particular aim, and walk down to where the sand ended and the rocks began, and sit near the rock pools. There was one pool that was much larger than the others. It was an almost perfect circular shape, and struck him as being a little too perfect to be a natural occurrence. 

When Baekhyun asked about the rock pool one morning over breakfast, Chanyeol told him the story of how it had come to be. "It's called Dara’s Pool,” he said, “and you’re right, it's not a natural formation. In fact, a keeper who served at Redhill quite a few years ago sat there and painstakingly chipped that pool out of the rock, so his sick wife could have a nice place to bathe in the sunshine. It was a real labour of love.” He was quiet for a moment, smiling down at his plate like someone with a secret. “Anyway, their story sadly didn’t end well: she later died of pregnancy complications, leaving him heartbroken, and then he drowned a couple of years after her death, while attempting to rescue the crew of a wrecked fishing boat. Their graves are in that little cemetery up on the hill.”

"He sounds like a real gentleman.” Baekhyun sectioned off a piece of fried egg with his fork, and fed it to Jim under the table.

"Well, he was nearly kicked out of his post for trying to run a sneaky home-brewed liquor business on the side,” Chanyeol said, and he laughed a little, his eyes crinkling with good humour. “And he was also suspected of being a wrecker — that is, someone who uses the lighthouse to lure ships into dangerous waters, so he can then loot the wrecks after they run into trouble. But whether he was innocent or not, I suppose no one can argue that he loved his wife very much.”

Despite the tragedy behind its origins, Baekhyun took a liking to the pool, and began to visit it regularly. It had become one of his favourite places on the island, along with a rock he'd found that was curiously shaped like a miniature sofa, and the tranquil little graveyard up on the clifftop. He often perched on the edge of Dara’s Pool with his feet dipped in the shallow sun-warmed water, either reading a book, or simply watching the light shining through the water’s surface as it made wiggling patterns on the skin of his legs. 

Sometimes he sat there and watched the seals, who often came up onto the rocks nearby to nap, or otherwise lay on the sand with their bellies facing the sun, occasionally rolling over to toast their sleek backs instead. As a general rule, they kept away from Baekhyun, and he treated them with the same courtesy. One afternoon, however, he was idly plucking the grape-like berries from a length of seaweed and flicking them away, when a brown fur seal clambered up onto the rocks right next to the pool. Its appearance was so sudden that it startled him, and he drew a sharp breath, dropping his seaweedy plaything into the water.

“Oh! Hey there, buddy,” he said to the seal. “Trying to sneak up on me, were you?”

The seal tilted its head to the side, watching him.

"I'm sorry, but I don't have anything for you to eat. Unless you like seaweed, that is.”

The seal continued to stare at Baekhyun; its unflinching gaze made him feel a little exposed, and not knowing what else to do, he found another piece of seaweed to muck around with, until the seal eventually got bored of him and returned to the water. He watched the dark shadow of it gliding smoothly beneath the surface, until it disappeared from sight.

 

“What do you know about the seals on this island?” he asked Chanyeol during dinner that night. There had been a food delivery the day before, and he could tell that Chanyeol was in a good mood because they had meat again; he’d made a steak pie for dinner, with flaky pastry, red wine gravy, and tender chunks of beef and potato. Sometimes Baekhyun thought it was worth moving to Redhill for the keeper’s cooking alone.

Chanyeol looked up from his food, his eyebrows raised in casual interest. “What about the seals?”

Baekhyun shrugged. “I had a run-in with one today. Normally they just ignore the fact that I’m there, but this one seemed very inquisitive... maybe even friendly.” He stabbed a piece of pastry with his fork and soaked it in a pool of gravy. “Anyway, it got me to thinking about how people believe the seals on this island aren’t normal seals at all, but selkies. I don’t really know what to believe myself.”

“Ah, yes, some people do believe that,” Chanyeol said thoughtfully. “Junmyeon was a big believer of selkies — as well as kelpies, merfolk, the kraken… any mythical being that was said to live in the sea, he believed in. Particularly selkies, though. He was always going on about wanting to catch one.”

“And do what with it?”

“Take away its skin and keep it as a human captive, I suppose.” Chanyeol shrugged. “They supposedly make very affectionate lovers, and so I guess the legend holds extra appeal for lonely seamen. Although to me, it sounds like they’d be a bit too flighty.”

“How so?” Baekhyun asked.

“As soon as a captured selkie gets a hold of her sealskin again, she’ll instantly leave everything behind to return to the sea,” Chanyeol said; he spoke with affected importance, like he was quoting from a book. “The compulsion is too strong. The sea, above all, is a selkie’s greatest love, and whoever he or she falls in love with will always be second-best. Or so I’ve heard, anyway.”

Baekhyun nodded. “I remember my father telling me something like that.”

Chanyeol smiled, and reached over for Baekhyun’s empty plate. “Yes, well, I’ve heard all the stories too. But I suppose they’re all just fairy-tales, really.” When he looked up at Baekhyun, the smile had faded a little; he got up from the table and headed over to the kitchen, where he’d left an apple crumble to cool on the bench. He took out a couple of bowls and began to dish it out. “Now, how about dessert?”

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Baekhyun didn’t see the seal again until it came to visit him several days later, when once more he was seated by the edge of Dara’s Pool in the late afternoon, killing time with a book before the evening watch. Again it appeared out of nowhere, sidling up next to him, but keeping a respectful distance at the same time.

"Afternoon," Baekhyun said, nodding politely at the seal. "Come to see me again?”

He was sure it was the same seal; during their last encounter, he'd noticed what looked like a small piece missing from one of its hind flippers. The little troublemaker had probably been in a fight with another animal. He leaned toward it very slightly, expecting it to scamper off, or at least shrink away from him. But it only stood its ground, watching him intently. 

This was a trusting creature, he thought. He didn't know why, since so many seals in these parts had been harpooned or clubbed to death by humans — and on this very island, probably. But nothing about the seal’s body language suggested that it was afraid of him. Its eyes were big and round and black as night, but there was no fear there, only curiosity.

“I think you need a name,” Baekhyun said, “since you keep coming to visit me.” He couldn't be sure if the seal was a male or female, and could only make an uneducated guess. Looking around for inspiration, his eyes fell on his precious copy of Moby Dick, which he’d left open on the rock next to him. “How about ‘Moby’ ?” 

The seal flared its nostrils and snorted at him in response. Baekhyun could only take this to be a sign of approval, and so the decision was made. 

Thereafter, Moby came back to see him often when he spent his free time down at the beach. If Baekhyun happened to be fishing at the time, he would wait for the seal to pop its head up from the water nearby; he’d toss it a sardine from his bait bucket, and it would snap the little fish up in one gulp and swim away. Each time this happened, he noticed that he would land a catch soon afterwards, without fail — it would always be a big one, too. If harming a seal was considered bad luck, then maybe being kind to one was good luck, Baekhyun thought, and he began to anticipate these occasional visits from his new friend. He wouldn’t have gone so far as to call Moby a pet, but it felt nice to forge such an unlikely friendship with one of the island’s non-human inhabitants.

Some days, the summer heat made it hard for him to sit near the water without wanting to throw himself into it. On one of the warmest afternoons, when Chanyeol was asleep and he had a couple of free hours to himself, Baekhyun stripped all his clothes off except for his underwear, leaving them folded on the sand, and ran into the sea, diving beneath the waves. Despite the warm weather, the water was cold; he surfaced and shivered, wrapping his arms around himself. He went underwater again and opened his eyes, watching a school of minnows dart around him — zigzagging in one direction and then another, flashing silver in the soft rays of filtered sunlight.

When he had cooled down enough, Baekhyun emerged from the water, dripping wet, and went to put his clothes back on. He had his t-shirt on, and was about to reach for his jeans when he noticed that they were missing from the spot on the sand where he'd left them. He looked up, and there right in front of him was his seal-friend Moby. His jeans were hanging from its mouth.

"Hey,” Baekhyun said, “those are mine!"

The seal blinked at Baekhyun innocently for a second or two, and then it turned around and scampered away up the beach, still holding his pants. It appeared to be heading towards the rocks. 

Baekhyun immediately took off after it. “Come back here! Where do you think you’re going?”

How was he going to return to the lighthouse with no pants — and what explanation would he have if Chanyeol emerged from his bedroom and caught him like that? He had little choice but to follow the seal, hoping to somehow get the jeans back. But for a creature with flippers instead of feet, it was surprisingly nimble, even on land; it was always one step ahead of him, and also knew the topography of the island far better than he did, and trying to keep up was harder work than he had bargained for.

“You little ingrate,” he yelled after the seal. “I gave you a name, you legless fiend, and this is how you repay me.” He followed Moby across rocks studded perilously with whelks and limpets, trying not to slip over on piles of kelp and slimy green patches of sea-moss. He had no idea where the seal was leading him — or what it planned to do with his pants — but it seemed that Moby wasn't coveting his faded Levi’s so much as using them for bait to lure him somewhere. But where, and why? As annoyed as he was, Baekhyun was curious, and also apprehensive, to find out.

Moby ended up leading him around the south end of the island, which Baekhyun knew was cave territory. Finally it paused in front of one of the caves. It looked like it was about to enter.

Baekhyun stopped short, holding both of his hands out in front of him. “Woah — wait.” He was so out of breath he could barely get the words out. “Just… hold on a minute.”

Moby turned to look at him. It gestured toward the mouth of the cave with several sharp movements of its head, and then dropped the jeans on the ground and barked at him. 

“What? You want me to go in there?” 

The seal began to bob its head up and down repeatedly. It actually looked like it was nodding at him, and Baekhyun let out a snorty little laugh of disbelief. 

“Um, I don’t think so,” he said. “No way.”

The seal barked at him again — somewhat indignantly, Baekhyun thought.

“No,” he repeated, trying to remain firm, but his resolve was weakening. “I’d really rather not.”

Moby barked again and resumed its ‘nodding’.

“What do you want me to go in there for, anyway?” Baekhyun asked. Moby didn’t respond. He stood there expectantly for a moment, until he began to feel like a fool because of course the seal wasn’t going to answer him, being a seal and all. He let out a groan of impatience. 

“Alright,” he muttered, “but I'm at least going to take my pants back, if that's alright with you.” He pointed a stern finger at the seal. “This had better be worth my time. And if anything sinister comes crawling out of hiding and tries to eat us, I’m letting it take you first.”

Moby seemed to have no qualms with this arrangement, and so after Baekhyun had put his jeans back on — doing his best to ignore the slimy patches of drool the seal had left as a souvenir — they forged on ahead. The mouth of this cave was much wider than the one he had tried to shelter in on his first day on the island, but it had the same fishy stink about it, which he imagined was like wandering into the guts of a whale carcass. It was damp and stuffy, and the further along they went, the more damp and stuffy it seemed to get. There was limited light to see by, but Baekhyun had his seal-friend beside him, who at least seemed to know where they were going, even if he had no clue himself. He felt strangely comforted by the animal’s presence. Moby seemed trusty, sort of like a dog, he thought — an odd-looking sea-dog type of fellow. That was what seals were, he supposed, at the end of the day.

He wondered if it was a selkie, too. Maybe this would mark the beginning of some kind of selkie uprising, in which the seal-folk all banded together to steal the pants of humans.

“Are you a selkie?” he said to Moby. “I won’t tell anyone if you are. Your secret’s safe with me.”

Moby didn’t acknowledge the question, but continued to hobble along a little way ahead of him. Exploring the cave was a slow business, for every few seconds the seal would stop, snuffling around on the cave floor, poking its nose into every nook and cranny. Baekhyun supposed this was fair — it was an animal, after all — but he wished Moby would rein it in a little for the sake of efficiency. The seal was looking for something inside the cave, and whatever it was looking for, it apparently wanted Baekhyun to see it. It was definitely leading him to something, by now that much was clear -- but to what?

Or maybe it was just being a seal, and doing seal-like things, and he was reading into it too much. Now it seemed to have forgotten he was there, and seeing an opportunity to escape, he began to sneak off in the direction of the cave entrance. He didn't get very far before Moby stopped him short with a stern bark, and he turned back around and followed obediently.

Suddenly Moby stopped and looked back at Baekhyun, as though waiting for him to react. There was still enough light for him to see something white up ahead of them. As his eyes adjusted, he realised it was part of a wreck — the wreck of a small boat. What was left of the little boat lay upside down, with a hole torn in one side of the hull. Baekhyun drew nearer, and the feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach solidified as he recognised the navy and red racing stripes, and the name printed near the stern, partly rubbed away but still legible: _The Day’s End_. 

Baekhyun felt so winded for a moment that he had to sit himself down on the floor of the cave, barely noticing the cold dampness seeping through the seat of his jeans. He could only guess the boat had become wrecked somewhere at sea, and that the remains had later been washed inside the cave. He sat there, just staring at it; for how long, he didn’t know, but it must have been quite some time. Moby was so quiet in the meantime that he almost forgot the seal was there, until it came to sit beside him. He turned to look at it. It cautiously moved towards him, and then it did something that took him by surprise. It laid its head in his lap, as though attempting to comfort him. 

Baekhyun’s eyes began to well up, and he let the tears run down his face for a moment before angrily rubbing at them with the heel of his palm. He had known of course, deep down. A part of him had always known, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

“Is this what you wanted me to see?” he said to the seal. Moby just continued to look up at him with those big moist eyes, but the eyes gave him no answers.

Baekhyun stirred so that the seal would get the hint to move its head away from his lap, and then he slowly got to his feet. “Okay,” he said in a quiet voice. “I think I’ll leave now. I’ve seen enough.” He made to walk away, but Moby hobbled along beside him and then walled him off, barking urgently.

“What?” Baekhyun pinned the animal down with a glare. “What are you trying to tell me? I don’t speak seal.”

Unfazed by his stern expression, Moby waved a flipper back in the direction of the wreck. Baekhyun heaved out a sigh and hesitated for a second or two before he approached the vessel once more, slowly and hesitantly. He didn’t want to look at it, knowing that his brother had probably spent his last moments in or around the unrecognisable wreck in front of him, but the seal’s behaviour told him that something was up, and he had to know what it was. Better to find out now and put it all to rest, he thought, than to be left mystified.

He walked over and lifted the side of the boat, attempting to set it upright again; it was hard work, but he finally managed it. There was nothing inside when he flipped it over; not that he really expected there to be, but the discovery of nothing was partly a relief. As soon as he did this, the seal climbed up into the remains of the boat, and Baekhyun looked on in bemusement as it tried to nose up the cover of the under-seat storage compartment. 

When Moby couldn't manage to get the compartment open after several earnest attempts, Baekhyun rolled his eyes and moved in to help. "Alright, alright, let me do it. It’s easier when you have hands.”

He lifted the cover, and inside he found a coiled length of nylon rope and a spare life-vest, among other boating accoutrements. Underneath it all was something that looked at first glance like a furry grey blanket, but revealed itself to be some kind of animal pelt. Baekhyun reached out to touch it. It was beautiful, and a mottled silvery-grey colour, with black spots here and there. He ran his fingers over it; it felt warm to the touch, and he gasped when it bristled beneath his fingertips, the hairs standing up on end as though the skin were still alive.

Baekhyun jerked his hand away and slammed the compartment shut. He walked away so quickly he almost broke into a run, back in the direction of the cave’s entrance. He could hear Moby somewhere behind him, barking at him desperately; it sounded like the seal was begging him to come back, but he refused to turn around.


	4. Chapter 4

**IV.**

_Dear Taeng,_

_The beach at Redhill is full of seals lately -- I am surrounded by my kin, ha ha. There is a friendly one who comes to visit me sometimes. I’ve named him Moby. I think it’s a him, anyway._

_I hope life and your studies are all going swimmingly. Speaking of swimming, I’m about to go for a leisurely afternoon swim right now. Island life sure is hard._

_Much love,_

_Seal Boy_

☆ ☆

_Dear Seal Boy,_

_Uni is okay. I'm studying really hard at the moment just to keep up, and it's tiring, both mentally and physically. I miss home so much sometimes. I'm far from the sea here, and it makes me feel a bit sick to think about it, like I can’t breathe in all the way. I miss clean air, fresh seafood and the feeling of my feet sinking into wet sand. I never thought I'd miss any of these things before I first went away for university, but each time I leave home, I miss them more and more (and you too, of course)._

_I hope you're okay out there… don’t you ever miss home too? It must be hard being so isolated. I worry about you. Don't work too hard, or you’ll ruin your beautiful hands! (I still think they’re wasted on you.)_

_Say hi to your new seal friend for me. Maybe I'll come out to visit someday, and then you can introduce me to him._

_Love always,_

_Taeng_

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

What he’d found inside the cave that day effectively killed Baekhyun’s desire to explore the island for a while. He still went down to the beach to read or swim whenever he had a spare hour, but he stopped venturing farther than Dara’s Pool — the thought of going anywhere near those caves made him feel uneasy. In a way, he was grateful for the discovery; on some level he had always known that his brother was long gone, and now that chapter of his life could be closed at last. As for any other secrets the island might be keeping, they were better off staying kept.

In the meantime, he continued to learn the ropes of lighthouse-keeping, until Chanyeol was confident enough in his capabilities to leave him unsupervised during the overnight shift. When it was Chanyeol’s turn on a night-watch, Baekhyun would often sit through part of it with him, even though he could have been asleep. He rarely had an easy time getting to sleep anyway; the open ocean was often either too loud or too silent, and both unsettled him enough to leave him sleepless. Keeping Chanyeol company seemed like a better use of his time than spending those hours wide awake in bed, tossing and turning to the point of exhaustion. It was also an opportunity to try and get to know him better.

“You really should go to sleep. It’s not a good habit to stay up all the time,” Chanyeol said to him on one such occasion, when Baekhyun had already sat with him through nearly half of his shift. It was a rainy night, but not a stormy one, and the yellow glow of the lantern made the watch-room feel cozy. There was a Fleetwood Mac LP on the record player, and Chanyeol seemed to be in a good mood, singing along quietly to every song; it was easy to tell when he didn’t know the lyrics because he would revert to humming, or making up words that were not actually real words at all. On more than one occasion, Baekhyun had to turn his head the other way so he wouldn’t be seen smiling to himself. 

Chanyeol had a sprig of pink happy wanderer flowers tucked behind his ear, and he was busy knitting something out of red yarn — probably a scarf, Baekhyun thought, although it was too soon to tell what that shapeless mass would turn out to be. Outside of being Redhill’s principal lighthouse keeper, he appeared to have an inexhaustible list of secondary talents: if he wasn’t knitting, he would be plucking at the strings of his acoustic guitar, or sketching, or jotting down something inside a small leather-bound diary, which he kept in the breast pocket of whichever brightly-coloured floral shirt he was wearing at the time. Baekhyun never had the heart to ask what he was writing. He didn’t want Chanyeol to feel pressured to share his private thoughts, but he always burned with curiosity just the same.

“Well, if you _really_ don’t want my company,” he said, after a lengthy pause, “I guess I’ll go.” He closed the book resting on his lap: an old guide to deep-sea fishing that had been sent over with the last supply delivery. It had arrived with a modest selection of other books from the one poky little library in town, all of which he’d already skimmed through. Some of the included titles were perplexing: ‘Does God Ever Speak Through Cats?’, ‘The Beginner’s Guide to Sex in the Afterlife’, and another one called ‘Eating People is Wrong’, which he had found particularly worrying (“that one’s probably meant for me,” Chanyeol had joked when he saw it). As much as Baekhyun loved the books he’d brought with him from home, there were only so many times he could re-read them without getting bored. Even Moby Dick was beginning to grow stale. 

He let out an exaggerated sigh. “You know what this lighthouse needs? Its own library.”

“This lighthouse needs a lot of things… an indoor toilet, for one. A television would be nice, too. Anyway, I never said I didn’t want your company, I’m just saying that you need your sleep.” Chanyeol said this with a very slight roll of his eyes, though Baekhyun caught him smiling down at his knitting a second later. 

He liked those smiles the best: the secret ones that seemed to happen naturally, whether Chanyeol knew he was being watched or not. Baekhyun couldn’t figure him out. He would smile and nod whenever they crossed paths during the day, and he was making more of an effort lately to keep up his end of the conversation, but otherwise he still kept to himself. Despite the two of them living in such close quarters, for Baekhyun it felt like every day there would be another reminder of how many things about Chanyeol he didn’t know; was it just that Chanyeol was naturally closed off, or was it something to do with himself — some kind of air he gave off that told Chanyeol he was not someone to confide in? Even when he offered up morsels of information about his own family, or his old life on Ayr, Chanyeol never took the bait. He would respond to Baekhyun’s chatter with interest, and ask him questions, but reveal absolutely nothing about himself at the same time.

“I don’t ever see _you_ doing much sleeping,” Baekhyun pointed out.

“I do sleep,” Chanyeol replied calmly. “Maybe not a lot, and maybe not when you’d expect me to… but I do.” For a moment, there was only the sound of the lantern rotating, and his knitting needles clicking together. Then he took a deep breath and held it, as though he were about to say something significant. “ _‘Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can is my twelfth.’_ ”

Baekhyun blinked at Chanyeol in surprise. “Since when have you been reading Moby Dick..?”

“That boring old thing?” Chanyeol laughed at the suggestion, and then grumbled to himself when he accidentally dropped a stitch. He quickly tried to pick it up again with the end of a needle. “I haven’t been reading it, actually. I saw you left your copy of it on the sofa, so I flipped it open at a random page and memorised the first sentence that stood out to me.”

“What do you mean by ‘that boring old thing’ — it's not boring at all.” Baekhyun knew he should have felt put out by Chanyeol’s continued disdain for one of his favourite pieces of literature, but he couldn’t help laughing along with him. “You wouldn’t know a good classic novel if someone threw it at your head.”

“Well, you’ll have to excuse me for being a philistine, then.” Chanyeol’s smile began as a tiny twitch at the corners of his mouth, and grew wider until it gave him away.

“You’re excused,” Baekhyun said, smiling back. He hoped he wasn’t going red at the thought of Chanyeol memorising a quote from a book he hated, just to impress him. But maybe that was reading into things too much. He stood up and yawned, stretching his arms high above his head, until he heard a satisfying crack from his tired joints. “Alright, I’m off to bed. You win.”

“Humph,” Chanyeol muttered. “Wish I could join you..”

Baekhyun raised an eyebrow at this. He waited for the look of realisation on Chanyeol’s face when it occurred to him what he had just said, and its possible implications. He tried to hold back a grin at the healthy blush creeping up Chanyeol’s neck and settling into his cheeks, but it was difficult.

“That, um, didn’t come out the way I wanted it to.” Still red in the face, Chanyeol cleared his throat before he continued. “What I meant to say was, I would also like to go to bed right now — my own bed. Not yours.”

Baekhyun laughed softly. “It’s okay, I knew what you meant. See you in a few hours.” With a playful wink over his shoulder, he left the flustered keeper alone in the watch-room to finish his shift. There was nothing wrong with flirting a little here and there, he thought. Chanyeol probably wasn’t even interested in him anyway, so what harm could it do? It wasn’t like he had anyone else to flirt with on their tiny island in the middle of the ocean; only the most handsome rumoured murderer-slash-cannibal on this side of the world, and a bunch of dozy seals.

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Later that week, a couple of Board inspectors came to Redhill unannounced to check up on the lighthouse. Chanyeol’s mood of eternal calm changed completely as soon as he spied the boat heading for the island. Baekhyun thought he needn’t have worried; the lighthouse was always kept immaculate under his care, but he seemed to get all in a flap about it anyway, running around like a headless chicken to make sure nothing was out of place. By the time they heard the dreaded knock on the door, the brass-work was all gleaming, and every piece of machinery spotless. The windows in the lantern room were so clean that, unless you got close enough to fog them with your breath, it almost looked like there wasn’t any glass there at all. 

Chanyeol was perfectly civil to the two men, even offering them tea and homemade oat cookies after the inspection was done — and he passed with flying colours, naturally — but Baekhyun noticed that he did not smile once during their visit. He seemed to visibly deflate with relief as soon as the men were back in their boat, speeding away from the island.

It was a trend Baekhyun had noticed whenever an outsider was present, which wasn’t often. Whenever they were due a supply delivery, for instance, Chanyeol always got Baekhyun to receive the man who captained the supply boat, and never greeted him himself. He seemed to be generally distrustful of other people, which Baekhyun chalked up to having lived on his own for too long. He didn’t seem to be lonely, though; if he was, then maybe loneliness was something he’d grown to accept as an unavoidable part of his existence. 

Sometimes it hurt Baekhyun to think back on all the things people had said about Chanyeol back in town — things he had once believed also, before he’d had the chance to meet Chanyeol in person. They had always been mostly unkind things, whether they came from a place of fear and ignorance, or genuine malice; but the fact that Chanyeol was aware of what people were saying about him was the worst part. Even with miles of ocean separating the two islands, the ridicule of others had still managed to filter through. The more time Baekhyun spent with him, the more he realised how unfair this was, and how many of those rumours seemed to be completely untrue.

He tentatively brought the subject up one evening, while watching Chanyeol light the lamp for the night. “You know, when I went home for a while before moving out here, quite a few people asked me what you were like,” he said. “They all seemed very interested in you.”

Chanyeol looked over at Baekhyun, a sign of vague interest flickering across his face. He tried to suppress it by looking nonchalant. “Oh? And what did you tell them?”

“I told them that, as far as I could tell, you were the polar opposite of what I had heard about you — in other words, not a cannibalistic maniac,” Baekhyun replied, smiling wryly. He rolled his eyes at the thought. “Funny, that… all I had to do was spend two days in the company of the infamous Redhill keeper, and all of a sudden everyone wants to give me the time of day."

There was the gold flash as the mantle lit up. Chanyeol blew out the flame on the end of the wax taper in his hand with a tiny puff of air. “Did they not give you the time of day before?”

“It’s kind of a long story. But my family has a lot to do with it,” Baekhyun said. When he noticed Chanyeol looking at him curiously, he hesitated, wondering if he should continue. “When all the members of a household start to vanish off the face of the earth, it’s probably expected that the only person left might be looked at with suspicion, don’t you think?”

“What makes you think people suspect you?” Chanyeol asked, frowning.

Baekhyun shrugged. “After dad disappeared, I could just feel people staring at me whenever I was out in the street; and I could tell what they were thinking. I could almost hear them whispering it to me, their thoughts were so loud: they all believed that I had something to do with it. The marlin story was nothing but a convenient cover-up, in their eyes.” He fell silent for a moment, lost in thought. “I mean, I suppose I don’t blame them, really. I was just an orphan plucked from a beach on some island — no one knew anything about me, not who I was, or who my real parents were, or where I’d come from. And look what I did.” His voice quietened down to almost a whisper. “I brought misfortune upon the entire family who was kind enough to take me in.”

Chanyeol shook his head, and picked up the empty kerosene canister to take down to the storeroom. “Don’t say that. I’m sure that’s not true.” He made his way towards the door of the lantern room. Baekhyun didn’t follow him.

“Sometimes it’s a bit hard to believe otherwise,” he muttered under his breath, watching Chanyeol leave the room. He listened to the sound of the keeper’s boots on the stone stairs until they faded into nothing, and then he went out to the gallery alone to watch the sunset.

 

That night, it was his turn to do the earlier portion of the night-watch, but Chanyeol sat through the first part of it with him anyway. They were quiet, each engrossed in their own activities, mugs of hot cocoa on the desk beside them. 

Baekhyun suddenly opened his mouth and out tumbled, “Chanyeol, can I tell you something?”

Chanyeol jerked his head up in surprise; apparently they had both been so quiet that he had forgotten Baekhyun was there. “Yes, of course… what’s wrong?”

“You know how there are all those caves around the rocks on the south end of the island? I was exploring one of them not too long ago, and I found part of a boat wreck in there,” Baekhyun said quietly. “It was my brother’s. There were no traces of him in there, but the boat was unmistakably his. I suppose he must have wrecked it somewhere near the island, and then what was left of the boat got washed inside the cave.”

Chanyeol looked at Baekhyun for a long time, his brow furrowed, but then his expression began to soften. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Baekhyun… that must have been very difficult for you. But you really should be careful about wandering inside those caves. If one of them fills up with water while you’re inside it, you could be in trouble.”

Baekhyun shook his head. “Don’t worry, I don’t think I’ll be going in there again. But I guess it’s a good thing I found the boat, in a way… it’s closure. I mean, there was no way he could still be around, right? A part of me wanted to know, and a part of me didn't want to know -- it's a question no one wants answered. But not knowing for so long has been so hard.” He didn’t realise he was crying at first; his eyes just began to fill with tears on their own, and inside his head, he bitterly thanked his body for betraying him. Chanyeol didn’t say anything, but he did reach across to hold Baekhyun’s hand. As embarrassed as he felt, Baekhyun appreciated the gesture.

Chanyeol opened his mouth to speak, and then hesitated. “Do you want to talk about it..?” he asked quietly.

Baekhyun didn’t know if Chanyeol was offering to hear him out because he actually cared, or if he was just being polite as usual, but he figured he would take him up on the offer anyway. “Sometimes I think that my brother was a bit envious of me,” he said, “because I had this interesting backstory, and he didn’t. Although I’m sure he knew I would have traded places with him in an instant, if it meant that I didn’t have to be ‘seal boy’ anymore. But he tried to make me feel better about it. He always said that seals were really cool, and really smart, and if he could be any animal in the world, then that was what he’d want to be.” He paused, smiling at the memory. “He was really good at that; making other people feel better.”

“I see,” Chanyeol said. “You must have been very close with him."

Baekhyun wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “He became a sort of father-figure for me while dad was off providing for us all the time, even though he was only a couple of years older, so that brought us closer. In some ways, I think his loss has probably hit me the hardest.”

“There’s no love quite like a brother’s love.” Chanyeol said this with a gentle smile.

Baekhyun nodded. “Even though we weren’t blood relatives, he never treated me like anything less. Anyway, he always used to say that blood may be thicker than water, but water’s better, because you can swim and go fishing and cook instant noodles in it.”

Chanyeol laughed at that. “Well, he wasn’t wrong.”

“What about your family?” Baekhyun asked. “Where are they..?” 

He regretted asking as soon as Chanyeol’s eyes began to cloud over. “I... don’t really know,” he said quietly.

Baekhyun frowned. “You don’t know..?”

There was a long pause before Chanyeol spoke again. His gaze flickered downwards. “I haven’t seen them in a very long time.”

“Oh.” Baekhyun sat there with his chin resting on his hands. He got the impression from the heavy silence and the sombre look on Chanyeol’s face that things were probably strained between him and his family. Maybe it was better not to ask.

He wondered if he had just killed any progress between them, because all of a sudden Chanyeol reached for Baekhyun’s empty mug and then his own, getting up to take them downstairs to the kitchen.

“I didn’t say something wrong, did I..?” Baekhyun called out after him. 

“Not at all,” came Chanyeol’s reply from the doorway. “I asked you questions about your family first. It’s only natural that you would reciprocate.”

Baekhyun sighed; he had a feeling Chanyeol probably wouldn’t return to the watch-room, and settled in to spend the remaining hours of his shift alone. But a couple of minutes later, he heard the sound of approaching footsteps out in the stairwell.

“Do you want some company?” Chanyeol asked, poking his head inside the door.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Baekhyun said, even though he wanted nothing more. “You should go get some sleep before we switch.”

Chanyeol waved him off. “It’s alright, I’ll sit up with you for a bit longer. I probably won’t be able to fall asleep just yet, anyway.” 

“Okay, then. I suppose you can stay.” Chanyeol actually looked happy when Baekhyun said this, and it made his stomach flutter a little. “But only for a little while, and then I’m sending you to bed, mister. You need your beauty sleep.”

“Are you trying to say that I'm ugly?" Chanyeol pouted, but Baekhyun could tell he was joking around. "Alright, I suppose I can live with that.” 

He sat down next to Baekhyun again, and resumed working on yet another project: the carving of some mystery object from a thick piece of driftwood, using a small wood-carving knife. After a period of deep, silent concentration, he began singing softly to himself. Sometimes when Baekhyun was still in bed in the morning, he heard Chanyeol singing from down in the kitchen, the sound of his smooth, mellow voice floating up the stairwell. It had a lovely soft quality to it that Baekhyun found very soothing, and it always made him want to fall asleep again; hearing it now at a much closer range, with no music playing in the background to obscure it, he enjoyed it even more.

“You’re a good singer,” he said, when Chanyeol had once again lapsed into a comfortable silence.

Chanyeol smiled. “Thanks, I guess.” He shot Baekhyun a quick little glance, and his smile grew a fraction wider. “So are you, by the way. Don’t be alarmed, but I may have overheard you once or twice, putting on a solo performance in the bath.”

Baekhyun laughed sheepishly. “Oops… sorry about that.” 

“Don’t be sorry. You have a beautiful voice.” Chanyeol glanced up at him quickly, and then shyly averted his gaze when their eyes met. “What were you singing, anyway? It sounded vaguely familiar.”

“Just something my mother used to sing to me. An old lullaby.” In order to distract himself from his own shyness at being complimented, Baekhyun said, “what do you think about while you're up here all by yourself?”

Chanyeol seemed surprised by the question. He examined the piece of wood in his hands and shrugged. “I don’t really know… life, I guess. And the many things I have to get done the next day.”

“Ah.” Baekhyun felt deflated, having expected something a little more vulnerable, or at least a little more profound. “I always thought managing a lighthouse would be a pretty relaxed occupation. I now realise that I was mistaken.”

Chanyeol laughed at that. “You were _definitely_ mistaken, I’m sorry to say. But still, it has its moments.” His smile faded a little. “Are you not happy here..?”

“Of course I am,” Baekhyun said quickly; he didn’t want Chanyeol to get the wrong idea. “But I can’t lie, it’s very hard work.”

“It is.” Chanyeol nodded his agreement. “Hard, but satisfying.” 

“What are you making, anyway?” Baekhyun asked, glancing over at the piece of wood in Chanyeol’s hands. “I can never keep up with all these pastimes of yours.”

“Oh, just something,” Chanyeol said absently. He looked up at Baekhyun and winked. “It’s a surprise.” Suddenly his hand slipped, and he nicked the tip of his thumb with the knife. “Ah, shipwreck!”

Upon hearing the improvised swear word, Baekhyun collapsed against the back of his seat, helpless with laughter. 

“What?” Chanyeol slipped the injured thumb into his mouth, sucking away a crimson bead of blood. He pulled the thumb out again and pretended to glare at Baekhyun. “Why are you laughing at me..?”

“No reason.” When Baekhyun tried to keep a straight face, he only ended up chuckling again, which set Chanyeol off as well. Eventually the laughter trailed off, and Chanyeol’s face settled into a gentle, fond expression. 

“It’s really nice, you know,” he said, “to hear another voice around here… especially laughter. Before you came, I hadn’t heard another person’s laughter in so long.” He fell silent again, looking contemplative. He was even more beautiful up close, his face glowing in the warm lamplight. There was only the sound of the lantern turning above them; it seemed to be moving much more slowly than usual, although Baekhyun couldn’t tell if this was just his mind playing tricks on him. 

For a moment, he thought Chanyeol might lean in closer, judging from the look in his eyes; it suggested something unfinished, that there was more he wanted to say. But he seemed unable to express himself, and Baekhyun could see the frustration this caused him, written clearly in the furrow of his brow.

Eventually Chanyeol let out a barely audible little sigh. He glanced at his watch, cleared his throat and opened his mouth to speak. “Alright, time’s up,” he said gruffly, pretending to be stern. “My shift's about to start, so off to bed with you.”

Baekhyun got up from his chair and headed towards the door, feeling slightly disappointed, and yet strangely thrilled at the same time. His cheeks still hurt a little from smiling so much. “I can’t believe you sat through my entire shift, you rascal. I’ll keep a better eye on the clock next time.”

“Baekhyun, wait a moment,” Chanyeol said, when he was just about to walk out of the room, and Baekhyun turned back to look at him.

“Yes, Chanyeol,” he said softly; he didn’t realise how tender the keeper’s name would sound coming from his lips until it had already escaped, and he felt a little embarrassed about it. But it was too late to take it back now, and if Chanyeol noticed, then his expression gave nothing away.

“About your family,” Chanyeol said, and then he paused, as though trying to search for the right words. “I’m sure you’ve been told this many times before, but what happened to them isn’t your fault. Stuff just… happens, that’s all. And sometimes the stuff that happens is bad.”

Baekhyun could feel a lopsided smile coming on. "You mean ‘shipwreck’ happens..?”

Chanyeol rolled his eyes, but he returned Baekhyun’s smile. “Yes, that. Anyway, if people want to think the worst of you after what happened to your family, then let them believe what they want to believe, and just focus on your own happiness instead. That’s the only thing you have any sort of control over. For what it’s worth, I believe you’re a good person, and that you did nothing wrong.”

Baekhyun nodded. “Thank you for saying so.” He smiled at Chanyeol and threw in a soft “goodnight” before he went to bed.

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

As much as he tried to avoid it, Baekhyun caught himself thinking about the wreck more and more over the weeks that followed. He had thought that finding his brother’s boat would allow him to close a door he’d been wanting to close for a long time; and it had, for a while. But then it had only opened up several new doors -- and a couple of windows, besides.

Then there was the creepy animal skin he had found inside the boat, which he still shivered to think about. What had Minseok been doing with it? This was the part of the mystery that baffled him the most. Had he simply found it somewhere? Had he hunted a seal for food while he was stranded and desperate, and then kept the skin afterwards? Had it been left there by someone else altogether?

He had concluded that, while it was surely the skin of a seal, it could not have come from any ordinary seal; nor did it look like a mere garment made of sealskin. Baekhyun had seen sealskin clothing before. In his hometown, older townsfolk who were not particularly superstitious would still walk around wearing coats and slippers made out of the stuff — souvenirs from the days before the sealing trade had breathed its last. But the sealskin he had found was different; it had shivered and bristled beneath his fingertips, showing signs of being very much alive. 

The more he dwelled on the whole situation, the wilder his fantasies became. Maybe Minseok was one of the seal-folk, and the strange pelt was his own selkie skin. That meant it was possible that his brother was somewhere out there still, walking around without his skin, searching everywhere for it. And perhaps if this was true, maybe he wasn’t far away from the island — Baekhyun might even be able to find him. The thought nearly brought tears to his eyes, but he refused to entertain the idea for too long. It would do no good to get his hopes up now, not after seven years.

Sometimes he felt like the skin was calling out to him somehow, and eventually he decided he would have to go and see it again, just once more. The thought both terrified and thrilled him at the same time. He went down to the beach alone one afternoon, making sure that Chanyeol was asleep before he left the house. He didn’t know what Chanyeol would say if he found out where he was going, especially given his warning to keep away from the caves. It was probably better if he didn’t know.

While making his way along the beach, Baekhyun came upon a group of napping seals, all huddled together on the sand. He walked past them quietly so as not to disturb them. Arriving at the cave a little later, he walked inside, blinking his eyes until they adjusted to the darkness. There was just enough daylight coming in for him to see by, and before long he arrived at the little boat, the wreckage stark white against the dark walls of the cave. 

Leaning over the side of the boat, he reached into the under-seat compartment, felt around for the skin, and gently lifted it out. Once again, it bristled when he touched it, and he tried to suppress a shudder at the strange sensation. He hesitated, then brought the skin up to his face and breathed in the scent of it. It smelled of the sea: of salt water and wet fur, and something else he couldn’t put a finger on. 

He turned it around in his hands, and walked a little way toward the light to see it more clearly. It was definitely a sealskin, of that he could be sure: the tail and flippers were still attached to it, but without a body to fill them out, they were loose and floppy, as was the head. The eyes were closed; the ears flattened; the nose leathery, and unsettlingly warm. It really did look just like an empty version of the animal it had come from. It didn’t have any kind of fastening like a coat would; there was only an opening on the lower belly down near the tail, which seemed like it might be big enough to slip over his head.

He wondered what would happen if he tried it on; if it would somehow mould to his form, or if it would just hang limply off him like a furry, lifeless blanket. Or would he perhaps turn into a seal himself? There was only one way to find out… but did he dare try it?

Baekhyun didn’t know what possessed him to try the skin on. As soon as the thought entered his head, it was something he felt compelled to do, without really thinking of the consequences. He slipped it over his head, and immediately it began to close in around him, as though it were shrinking to fit his body. He let out a gasp and froze, his breath catching in his throat. He heard something then: just a soft whisper at first, something almost inaudible and incomprehensible, followed by a low, mournful sound -- a groaning right in his ears. Terrified, he yanked the skin back up over his head and threw it down on the floor of the cave. Now his heart was pounding hard, and he had to make a conscious effort not to breathe too heavily. The last thing he needed was to draw attention to himself. Who knew what might be lurking nearby?

After calming himself down a little, he picked the skin up again, holding it out by the tips of his fingers, and left it neatly folded on top of the wreck. If someone really was out there looking for it, then hopefully they would wander into the cave and discover it on their own. He would not interfere any more than he had done already.

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Ultimately, Baekhyun decided not to mention finding the sealskin to Chanyeol. It was bad enough that he was beginning to question his own wild imagination, and he didn’t need his companion to do the same. If Chanyeol thought he wasn’t mentally fit to work on the island, he would probably arrange for him to be shipped back home, and what would he do with himself then?

He resolved to forget about the whole thing entirely, and very nearly did so, until one night when he was woken up by a groaning sound -- it was similar to the sound he had heard that day inside the cave, although this time it was fainter. He lay there, frozen stiff with fear, the sheets pulled right up to his chin. He listened carefully. Maybe it was just the wind howling, he told himself; but he had heard the wind howling on enough occasions to know that it didn’t sound like that. The next thing that came to his mind was a wild animal in pain — perhaps there was an injured seal down on the beach, or it could be the call of a whale. Whatever it was, it disturbed him enough to keep him awake, and it wasn’t until shortly before sunrise that it finally quietened down enough for him to fall asleep.

 

In the morning, feeling unrested and irritable, he walked down to the beach alone after breakfast, just to see if he could find any beached or injured marine life washed up on the shore. As usual, he found a couple of seals lounging around on the sand, but all of them were alive, and none of them appeared to be in distress. Some of them perked their heads up to look at him as he walked by, but mostly his presence went unacknowledged; the others merely opened their eyes when they heard him approaching, and closed them again as soon as he was gone. 

He was doing some fishing a little later when he saw Chanyeol walking towards him on the beach, with Jim pottering alongside him. He was carrying a plastic bucket in each hand, one red and the other blue.

“Ahoy there,” Chanyeol called out pleasantly, with a little nod of his head. “Any luck?”

“Not yet,” Baekhyun said.

As he got closer, Chanyeol pointed out towards the water. “Try casting your line out over there instead.”

Baekhyun looked at him oddly, but then did what he was told. Not long after he did so, he felt a bite, and soon he reeled in a beautiful spotted King George whiting. "Holy crap. Are you Jesus or something?"

Chanyeol laughed at that. "I don’t know. Did Jesus wear tropical shirts?"

"Not sure. I can’t say I’ve ever met him personally."

“Put it in here and we’ll take it home,” Chanyeol said, holding one of the buckets out towards him. He was still smiling.

Baekhyun gently unhooked the fish from his line and dropped it, still wriggling about, into the bucket. “What are the buckets for, anyway?”

Chanyeol shrugged. “I just came down to see if you might fancy a spot of cockling.”

Baekhyun considered the offer; he did need an activity to take his mind off things, he thought -- not that it would work for very long. “Sure, I guess.”

Chanyeol handed him the bucket with the whiting in it, and motioned for him to follow. “Come with me, then, and I'll show you where to find them."

Baekhyun followed him to the other end of the beach, listening to the dry sand squeaking beneath his toes. “I hardly ever see you down at the beach these days.”

“I need to be in the mood for it. Lately, I haven’t been,” was all Chanyeol said.

Baekhyun nodded. He wanted to say something else, but he waited until they were both on their hands and knees near the shoreline, digging for shellfish. “This might be a weird question… but is the lighthouse haunted at all?” 

“Hmm. I suppose it might be, for all we know. Why do you ask?” In no time at all, Chanyeol had already found his first cockle, which he dropped with a clunk into the bucket next to him. Soon he found another one, and then another, while Baekhyun’s bucket remained woefully empty, apart from the fish. Wanting to join in on the digging game, Jim began to dig his own hole a little way over, flicking sand all over the two of them, until Chanyeol got fed up and initiated a continuous game of fetch with a piece of driftwood, just to keep him occupied elsewhere.

“I was just wondering,” Baekhyun said. His fingernails hit something hard beneath the sand. “I got one!” he cried, pulling out the hard object, and then he noticed several tiny legs poking out of it. “Oh, wait… just a hermit crab.” Feeling a little deflated, he got up and tossed the crab into the sea. It landed with a _plop_ into the water.

Chanyeol laughed. “You’ll get better at it, don’t worry… you just need to know where to dig. See where all those little holes are?” He took one of Baekhyun’s hands in his own, and moved it over to a cluster of small holes in the sand. “Those are their breathing holes. Try digging there.” He turned away and began to scoop out more piles of wet sand with his large hands, stopping every now and then to add another cockle to his bucket. 

Baekhyun began digging in the spot that Chanyeol had pointed out to him, and at last he was rewarded for his efforts, his fingernails scraping against something hard and smooth — and this time, thankfully without legs or pincers. "Yes! Here we go." He pulled it out, wiping some of the sand away from the shell with his fingers; it was a pale cream colour, with ripples of green and grey running through it. He turned it around in his fingers, marvelling at the size of it. “He’s a big fella, isn’t he?”

By that time, Chanyeol had already found several cockles, but he still made a big deal out of Baekhyun’s first catch, whistling in admiration. “He sure is. Go on, pop him in your bucket. Don’t leave any on the sand for too long, or they'll try to burrow back in. Sneaky things.”

Baekhyun dropped the cockle into his bucket and went back to digging. “Anyway, the reason I asked about the lighthouse being haunted is because I heard some strange sounds last night.” He’d been reluctant to ask Chanyeol about the noises he’d heard, since he still couldn’t be sure he hadn’t dreamed the whole thing up. But he had to know.

Apparently what he said had piqued Chanyeol’s interest, because he quickly looked up from the hole he’d been digging. “What kind of sounds?” he asked.

Baekhyun thought for a moment. How could he even describe what he’d heard? It had just sounded like sadness — that was the only way he could think of to accurately describe it; but to someone who hadn’t heard it, such a description probably wouldn’t make any sense. “It was like a weird groaning sound… sort of like what an injured animal might make. Whatever it was, it was creepy as hell.”

“I see.” Chanyeol shrugged and went back to digging, the wind blowing his long hair all over his face. “I wouldn’t worry too much… maybe it was just a whale. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if this place _was_ haunted. A few past keepers have recorded unusual activity in and around the building; they weren’t isolated incidents, either.”

“Great,” Baekhyun muttered to himself, “why am I only finding out about this now?”

“I'm pretty sure I mentioned it before… though if it makes you feel better, I’ve never seen anything out of the ordinary, myself. But then some people just have a special sense for that kind of thing. Looks like you might be one of them." Smiling, Chanyeol opened his hand and dropped two large cockles into Baekhyun’s bucket. "There, that should get you caught up a little. By the way, whoever collects the least is on dinner duty tonight.”

Baekhyun couldn’t help feeling a little outraged at this announcement. “Says who!”

“Says I,” Chanyeol said, laughing wickedly. “So you’d better get digging.”

In the end, Chanyeol of course found many more cockles than Baekhyun did, but then he tipped them all into Baekhyun’s bucket while his head was turned. When Baekhyun shot him a surprised look, he smiled and said, “beginner’s luck.” Giving Baekhyun a friendly pat on the shoulder, he got to his feet and called out for Jim, who could now be seen harassing a couple of seals further along the beach.

“Well, looks like I’ll be the one cooking tonight,” he said. “You can carry the buckets up to the house for me, though. I reckon that’s fair.” He started walking off ahead with his hands in the pockets of his canvas shorts, whistling something cheerful, the untucked tail of his red hibiscus-print shirt flapping about in the breeze. Baekhyun stood on the beach alone for a moment longer, and made the semaphore hand positions for _I L-I-K-E Y-O-U_ at Chanyeol’s retreating back, pretending he had his flags with him. He picked up the two buckets — Chanyeol’s bucket was now empty, while his own was full of cockles and one fish — and hurried along after him.


	5. Chapter 5

**V.**

_Dear Taeng,_

_For the first time in my life, I feel like I am where I belong; that things have come full circle, and this supposedly cursed place where I originally came from is actually the place I was meant to be._

_Also, I have grown to like Chanyeol a lot more than I expected to. I find him to be polite, kind and straightforward… and so far, there has been no evidence of any cannibalistic tendencies. He doesn’t say a lot, but when he does speak, you know he is choosing his words carefully; he never makes you feel like he is wasting them on you._

_I hope you can meet him too, one day._

_Much love,_

_Seal Boy_

☆ ☆

_Dear Seal Boy,_

_Tell me more about your island existence. What do you eat? What do you do for fun? How do you not go mad?_

_The keeper actually sounds like a really decent person. I am so glad that you two are getting along. Although if he ends up knocking me off the top spot on your list of best friends, I may have to come over there and do something about it!_

_Love always,_

_Taeng_

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Baekhyun didn't hear the mysterious groaning again for a while, and almost forgot about its existence — at least until the night it came back. Because it was his turn to do the later half of the night-watch, he found it even more disturbing: knowing that Chanyeol was asleep downstairs in his bedroom, and he was all alone up in the tower, with only that mournful sound for company.

He longed to hear another human voice, but listening to the radio and playing some of Chanyeol’s records only brought temporary comfort. When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he walked around the ground floor with a torch, searching the kitchen and living room, and then he went back up the stairs, poking his head into every room on his way up the tower, apart from the one where Chanyeol was sleeping. He shone the torch inside each door and said “Who are you? Show yourself!" in a harsh whisper, half-expecting some kind of ghostly figure to jump out at him. Nothing happened. He even went to check on Jim, thinking that if there was a strange presence in the building, the dog would probably be the first one to sense it. But Jim remained fast asleep on top of his cushion, his tail twitching back and forth to the rhythm of his dreams.

In the days that followed, the sound seemed to come in fits and bursts, as though whatever creature it came from were in the throes of death. When Baekhyun went down to the beach to go fishing one afternoon, it sounded louder than it had up in the tower. He laid his fishing rod down near Dara’s Pool, and attempted to follow the sound. It got even louder as he wandered along the rocks — and louder still when he reached the cave, by which time it was so loud he almost felt it vibrating in his own blood, and had to cover his ears with his hands.

He was certain the noise was coming from within the cave; but instead of repelling him, it urged him inside. As much as his brain baulked at the idea of facing whatever was making that sound, he had no choice — his feet seemed to move of their own accord. His throat was dry, his palms slippery, and he found himself wishing that Moby was around to accompany him; his seal-friend hadn’t come up to the beach to pay him a visit in a good while, though it was arrogant of him, he supposed, to expect a wild animal to be there at his beck and call. While fishing the week prior, he thought he had seen a seal pop its head up out of the water a little further down the beach, out past the breakers; it appeared to be watching him for a time, but from a distance he couldn’t be sure that it was Moby. He had waved at it just in case, and it had responded by quickly diving under the water and swimming away. As it did so, its rear flippers were raised up in the air for a second or two, as though it were waving back at him.

When Baekhyun finally reached the wreck of Minseok’s boat, the sealskin was still folded on top of the gunwale, right where he’d left it. By then, the groaning sound was so full of sorrow that it made his heart physically ache to hear it. Tears began to leak from his eyes, though he did not know why. 

He took the sealskin, holding it in his hands, and looked around for somewhere to put it. For a moment, he considered burying it in the sand out on the beach, but then thought better of it -- Jim might dig it up, and who knew what would happen then. As he walked around, he nearly tripped over something -- a small hole in the floor of the cave. Crouching down, he stuffed the skin into the hole, and then he found a large, loose rock about the size of a brick, and placed it on top of the skin to cover it up. He walked around gathering more rocks, with which he created a sort of funeral mound, burying the skin underneath. It seemed to be working — gradually, the groaning began to grow fainter and fainter.

Baekhyun got to his feet when he was done; turning around, he jumped in surprise when he saw a dark shape lurking behind him. As his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he saw that it was a seal.

“Moby?” He clutched at his chest with one hand, as if this would keep his pounding heart from leaping right out of it. “Is that you..?

He thought it was -- it looked like Moby -- but it was hard to tell for sure. He wondered how long the seal had been there, watching him. It stared at him unblinkingly. Suddenly it barked. The noise was so loud and unexpected that it reverberated off the cave’s walls like gunfire, and it made Baekhyun stumble backwards, falling onto his backside on the rocky floor. He lay there for a moment, stunned into silence, letting out a groan when the pain in his bruised behind began to set in. The seal only continued to stare him down.

“What!” Baekhyun snapped, “what are you looking at?”

Just a dumb animal, he muttered to himself as he slowly and painfully got to his feet — what did it know? No concept of law or duty, no moral compass… every thought and action governed by instinct. He bent down to pick up a rock, and was about to throw it at the seal, but when he saw it flinch in expectation of the coming blow, he hesitated, overcome by guilt. Then he saw the little piece missing from its back flipper, and realised that it was his friend after all; this made him feel even worse, and he turned away from the poor creature’s frightened gaze to lob the rock into the bowels of the cave instead. He must have thrown it far, because he couldn’t hear it land anywhere.

Sometimes he couldn’t help thinking that the seals — particularly the ones that lived on Redhill island — had uncannily human features. Perhaps it was the eyes that did it; the soulfulness of those eyes. The creatures that were thought to be more human-like were the ones that seemed to inspire the most admiration, and the most human pity; most people did not wish to harm one of their own. But the fishes, with their cold, unblinking eyes; the jellyfish and the molluscs and the urchins; the starfish and sea cucumbers and anemones, the krill and the nautili, the corals and the crustaceans, all those faceless, expressionless, seemingly emotionless creatures of the sea, those were the ones that no one seemed to really care about. And why was animal intelligence and worth measured up to human standards, he wondered; dogs and other domesticated animals were highly valued because they could be trained to do things that were considered useful to people — but what about the seabirds, who could navigate whole oceans without the use of a map, or the salmon who could find its way back to the very same stream in which it was spawned?

He looked at Moby, and Moby looked back at him. The seal remained silent, but it flared its nostrils at him, and regarded him in a curious, innocent way, with its head tilted to one side. It looked at him like it could read his mind and heart, but then maybe he was giving it too much credit. He hurried out of the cave, not checking to see if it was following him. It was a wild animal, he reminded himself, and nothing more. He had to stop believing it was trying to tell him something. 

 

While walking back toward the beach, meandering around the rock pools so as not to step into them, he suddenly felt hungry. Not just hungry -- ravenous. He walked past a couple of larger rock pools and, for reasons unknown to him, he felt compelled to kneel down before one of them, thrust an arm into it, and begin foraging around for whatever treasures he could find. First he grabbed a handful of sea-grapes and plucked them from the stem one by one; he bit into them, relishing the wet burst on his tongue, the salty nectar within. He collected whelks from around the rim of the pool and used the point of his bait knife to extract them from their shells; then he found an urchin hidden within a crevice, smashed it open on a sharp jut of rock and feasted on the soft orange segments inside, tossing the spiky husk away. But still he was not satisfied.

When he reached Dara’s Pool to retrieve his fishing rod, he lay down on his belly and dipped a hand into the water. He wiggled his fingers about, grabbing fistfuls of minnows that were lured over by the movement, and ate them alive, stuffing their tiny, slippery bodies into his mouth, barely chewing before he swallowed. Snatching up one last wriggling sacrifice, he got to his feet and hooked it on the end of his line. He cast the line out into the ocean, standing on the very edge of the rocks with his feet apart to anchor himself. He felt somehow primal, and invincible — he had never felt so alive. 

He waited patiently for a bite, ignoring the insistently growling emptiness beneath his ribs. A little later, he felt an almighty tug that nearly pulled him forward into the sea. He battled with it for a while, challenging it to a game of tug-of-war, until he felt it start to surrender. After a worthy struggle, he at last began to reel in his prize -- a flailing, silvery snapper, which he whacked against a rock to make it stop flapping about. He hardly had the patience to slit it open and clean it first, but he did so anyway, rinsing it quickly in seawater before devouring it right there and then. He crouched on the rock and ate with his fingers, tearing strips of pink-white flesh away from the bones, savouring its sweetness. 

When he was done, he used some of the innards for bait and managed to land another fish, even bigger than the first. He’d been having good luck with fishing lately, but to land two big, beautiful snappers in such a short time was certainly an unusual occurrence, if not a happy one. This second fish he decided he would take back to Chanyeol as a gift, and he dropped it, seizing and gasping, into his bucket to carry home.

On his way back to the lighthouse, he tossed the remains of the first fish amongst a group of lethargic seals, all huddled up together on the sand. The animals didn’t spare either him or the paltry offering a second glance, heaving themselves over onto their bellies again and going back to sleep. He saw a couple of gulls zero in on the dead fish as he passed by.

Chanyeol seemed thrilled with the catch, and that night he baked the snapper whole with lemon butter. Baekhyun was still full from his feast earlier, and only picked at what was on his plate. He still had fish scales stuck under his fingernails. He wondered if he’d somehow lost the taste for cooked fish; although it had smelled delicious when Chanyeol had pulled it from the oven, it didn’t seem as appetising anymore.

“Are you alright?” Chanyeol asked, looking at him worriedly. “You're very quiet, and not eating much.”

Baekhyun pushed his plate away from him. “I’m suddenly not that hungry." In fact, he didn't feel well at all. “I think maybe I should go lie down for a while.”

Later that night, he unexpectedly fell ill. He was shivering and feverish, and Chanyeol insisted on taking over the whole of the night-watch to give him a chance to rest. Every so often, he came down to check on Baekhyun; he was always outwardly calm, but his furrowed brow and pursed lips betrayed something of his concern. 

If Baekhyun had been in a position to appreciate it fully, then he might have swooned a little over how well Chanyeol took care of him that night: taking his temperature at regular intervals, bringing him drinks to keep his fluids up, even sponging his forehead with a cloth dampened in cold water to cool him down — all this on top of juggling his usual night-shift duties. It was like having two children to look after, Baekhyun thought with some amusement, except that one of the children was seventy feet high, and needed to be wound up once every hour.

In between Chanyeol coming down to check up on him, he slept fitfully, tossing and turning between the sweat-soaked sheets, but it was useless — he couldn’t find a cool and comfortable position to lie in, no matter what he did. There was no rest, no relief; the sea breeze coming in from the open window stirred the curtains, but it did nothing to soothe his fever. 

He had something of a hallucination at one point — or maybe it was a dream, he couldn’t be sure — in which the sea appeared around his bed, and began rocking it to and fro like a boat. It looked and felt so real that the motion began to make him feel nauseous. He could hear the water lapping against the sides of the bed, and then a woman came rising up out of the waves; he blinked up at her in mute terror, unsure of what he was seeing. She had oil-slick eyes and greenish skin, studded all over with limpets and barnacles. Her lower half was the tail of a seal, and wrapped around her torso was a kind of living garment, made of a writhing mass of pulsating tentacles; the suckers on the tentacles were not suckers at all, he realised, but hundreds of tiny blinking eyes. Her black hair floated up in the air above her, as though she were submerged underwater. 

Baekhyun couldn’t be sure that he was even awake, but the vision before him was so frighteningly real, and it had him white-knuckling the sides of the mattress so hard that his hands began to shake. “Who are you?” he asked; his lips were dry and cracked, and simply pushing those few words out was exhausting.

“I know you have the skin of one of my children,” the creature said, but she said it without her lips moving; instead the words came to Baekhyun through his thoughts, invading his mind, and it made him want to claw at his temples and forehead to stop it. But he dared not loosen his grip on the bed. The rocking motion made him feel like he might fall out of it at any moment.

"Who are you talking about?” he said, through gritted teeth.

Another question left unanswered. “Give him back his skin; he belongs in the sea, with his people,” the seal woman said. “He doesn't belong here. Without his skin, he will die.”

Baekhyun laughed. It bubbled up involuntarily, and he almost didn’t recognise the sound of it. Was that really how he laughed? How could he have forgotten what his own laughter sounded like? “And what makes you think that I have it..?”

“Give it back, or you will live to regret it.”

"But _who_ do I give it to?” Baekhyun repeated, exasperated. “Does it belong to my brother?” Before he could get a reply, he jerked awake. His eyes snapped open and he found himself still in his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Risking a glance over the edge of the mattress, he saw that all the water was gone. Now he had a pounding headache that wasn’t there before. He rubbed his forehead and groaned.

He remembered only parts of the dream after he had fully awoken. The terrifying seal-woman, spouting some gibberish about returning the skin of one of her children, whoever the hell that was. But the fear he'd felt at the time stayed with him, cold and wet and clinging, and it was impossible to shake it off.

And then who was the creature referring to? She hadn't even bothered to tell him. How could he return something to someone, if he didn't even know who they were?

After a while, he concluded that it was just a dream -- a very strange dream, granted, but definitely a dream, brought on by his sickness. As soon as he was able to convince himself of this, he finally drifted off into a restless sleep, and woke up some time later to find Chanyeol hovering over him, shaking him gently. 

“Baekhyun… Baekhyun, wake up. Can you hear me..?"

Baekhyun mumbled something incomprehensible, and shifted around a little on the bed. He rubbed his eyes, and when he opened them he saw the blurry outline of Chanyeol’s silhouette. 

“Ugh. What happened..?” 

“I came down to see if you were okay, and I heard you whimpering something in your sleep,” Chanyeol said. “I couldn't work out what you were saying. I think you were having a nightmare.”

“Oh.” Though Baekhyun could still vaguely remember the vision of the frightening seal-woman, he decided not to mention it. “Well, whatever it was, I’ve forgotten it already.”

“Okay. That’s good.” Chanyeol placed a warm hand upon his forehead. “You’re a lot cooler now, at least. If you’re a bit better by the morning, then maybe I won’t need to call a doctor after all.”

“You can get a doctor to come all the way out here..?” Baekhyun was surprised.

Chanyeol shook his head. “They’ll only send someone out if it’s serious. But I can still call up to ask for medical advice if it’s something minor.”

Baekhyun lay back against the pillow. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to get back to sleep tonight. Do you mind if I come up and sit with you?”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Chanyeol said, gently but firmly. “You’re unwell, and you need to rest.” He was about to move away from the bed when Baekhyun reached out to grab his hand; he felt Chanyeol flinch at the suddenness of the gesture, his fingers stiffening in Baekhyun’s grasp, but then he relaxed a little.

“Please? I really don’t want to be alone,” Baekhyun whispered. “And you can’t stay down here with me, so what other choice is there?”

Chanyeol turned back to look at him with a doubtful expression, like he was about to cave in even if he didn’t want to. “Well... I suppose that _might_ be okay,” he said, with some reluctance. “But only for a little while."

“Great.” Baekhyun threw the covers off his body and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He had forgotten that he was stark naked — he had ripped off all of his clothes while he was still feverish, in a desperate attempt to cool down — but then he saw Chanyeol’s brows lift up a fraction, and he quickly pulled the sheets up to hide himself again. “I should probably put some clothes on first, shouldn’t I?”

“That would be advisable.” Looking like he was trying to hide a smile, and blushing cutely at the same time, Chanyeol turned away and headed towards the bedroom door. “I’ll see you upstairs."

When Baekhyun went up to the watch-room a little later, he was met with the whirring sound of the lantern rotating, and otherwise there was nothing but comforting silence. When he pulled up a chair to sit down, Chanyeol handed him a small rectangular parcel wrapped up in brown paper. “I was going to give this to you when you were feeling better,” he said, “but since you're here, I may as well do it now."

Baekhyun looked at the parcel, and then up at Chanyeol's beautiful smiling face, blinking at him in surprise. "For me..?”

Chanyeol laughed. “Yes, for you… is it that much of a shock that I might like to give you a present?”

“No," Baekhyun said, "I guess not.”

Chanyeol looked at him expectantly. “Well? You can open it now, if you like. Unless you don’t want to.”

"Right. Of course." Carefully, Baekhyun peeled back the brown paper with his fingertips. Inside was a small, square wooden box, beautifully decorated with delicate hand-carved patterns around the edges of the lid. The sides of the box were covered with seashells and pieces of coloured glass, the edges of each piece sanded smooth.

“It’s a little box for you to put important things in,” Chanyeol explained. “Like your brother’s letter, for instance. Things that you want to keep safe."

Baekhyun turned the box around in his hands, marvelling at the intricacy of the carving. Some parts were a little wonky, but that only added to the overall character of it, he thought. “When did you even find the time to make this?”

“Oh, you know. I’ve just been working on it here and there. I could tell that the letter was very meaningful to you, so…” Chanyeol trailed off and looked shy all of a sudden, twisting a strand of hair around the end of his finger. “We should take good care of the things that mean a lot to us, I think… it may not be the prettiest box out there, but I’m sure you’ll find some sort of use for it.”

“It _is_ pretty, though,” Baekhyun said. “Beautiful, in fact. As well as useful. You're too kind.”

Chanyeol looked shy all over again. "It's nothing, really. I have quite a bit of time to myself during the night-shift, and if I didn't find some way to fill it, then I'd probably lose my mind."

"Is this why you kept sending me to bed when I tried to crash your shifts?" Baekhyun asked, in a jokingly accusing tone. "Because you were trying to secretly make presents for me..?"

"Partly, yes. I’d hate for you to think it was because I don't enjoy your company. I really do. Especially after..." Chanyeol took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "After being on my own for such a long time. It's not good for people to be alone... to be so far away from everyone else. Though I feel like I can cope with it now, it does still get to me sometimes. So I'm sorry if I seemed a bit cold with you when you first came here. I just had to get used to having another person around again.” He smiled. “Especially someone like you, with enough personality for three people."

Baekhyun laughed at that. "Well, I plan to be around for quite a while,” he said. “It would take a lot to make me want to leave this place. I already can’t imagine living anywhere else.” He meant it, too.

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

The more time Baekhyun spent on Redhill Island, the more distant the world outside it began to feel. Sometimes he thought it really was like living on another planet. Taeyeon sometimes mentioned current happenings in her letters — things about Space Invaders, and babies being grown in test tubes, things that made little sense to him. Often he would have no idea what she was referring to, or he would only hear of a particular event well after it had occurred. Inside the lighthouse, they had no television, and there was no gossip grapevine like the one propagated by the old ladies who shopped at Mr. Lee's grocery store. Their only connection to society was the radio, and the fortnightly supply delivery, which, if they were lucky, came with a newspaper or two. The people they talked to while making weather reports and checking in with neighbouring light-stations were often the only voices they heard — apart from each other’s — for weeks at a time.

Occasionally Baekhyun wondered if the isolation really _could_ make him go mad -- and if it did, would he even realise that it was happening? There were days when he swam in the ocean, or walked along the beach alone, watching his own footprints melting into the wet sand, and felt truly wild. There really was no other word he could think of to describe the feeling he had; he did not feel entirely human anymore. Something important within him was changing, but he couldn’t work out what it was.

 

It was a calm, quiet day. The sea was in a placid mood, and there was barely a breath of wind. They were standing outside on the gallery, scrubbing the salty windows of the lantern as usual, when Chanyeol suddenly froze.

“Did you hear that?” he said in a hushed voice. He leaned his sponge-on-a-stick against the window, and turned around to face the ocean. “What was that noise?”

“What noise?” As much as Baekhyun strained his ears, he heard nothing. There was only the sound of the sea down below, foaming against the rocks.

“It was like beating wings, or something.” Chanyeol stood very still, listening intently. Finally he shrugged and went back to cleaning. “Must’ve been a bird. Whatever it was, I didn’t see it. It was too quick.”

Baekhyun bent down to retrieve his cleaning cloth from the bucket of soapy water near his feet. “Sounds like you’re hearing things,” he said. He chuckled to himself and muttered, “funny, that. I'm supposed to be the one who hears things.”

“Shhh,” Chanyeol hissed, holding up a hand to silence him. "I just heard it again.”

Baekhyun had heard enough strange sounds lately, but he almost felt let down at being unable to hear this one. “Describe it for me.”

"It was…” Chanyeol hesitated for a moment, struggling to put his words together. “It was sort of like a thumping, whooshing sound.”

"Those are two pretty distinct kinds of sounds.”

"I know. But it was like both of those sounds at the same time."

“Maybe we're both losing the plot. You know, cabin fever or whatever," Baekhyun said, joking around half-heartedly to lighten the mood, though it fell flat because Chanyeol didn’t even humour him with a smile. 

"There it goes again." Chanyeol's eyes grew wide, and this time Baekhyun heard it too: a soft thumping sound, closely followed by another. 

"I heard it that time.” From the corner of his eye, Baekhyun saw something shoot past, and he spun around to catch it, but there was nothing there. “Did you see that...?”

“I think it was… another bird, maybe..?” As soon as Chanyeol said this, something large and white slammed into the window. They both jumped in fright.

“Holy shit,” Baekhyun said, just as another bird flew into the glass beside him; he caught a flurry of feathers before it fell away from the window. He stood over its body, looking down at it. “It's a gull.” 

Two more birds hit the glass in quick succession, one of them hitting the window right near his head, making Baekhyun yell out in surprise. "What the hell is happening?” 

“Quick, let’s get inside.” Chanyeol grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him towards the door leading inside the lantern room, which he quickly shut behind them. The very second he closed it, more birds collided with the lighthouse, one of them crashing into the door. There were already streaks of blood painting the glass, to which stuck a couple of downy white feathers. 

“Why are they doing that?” Baekhyun asked, looking on in horror from behind the safety of the window.

"I don't know. In all the time I've spent on this island, I can definitely say I’ve never seen anything like this before.” Chanyeol’s voice sounded slightly shaky. “I’ve seen a couple of birds fly into the windows accidentally and knock themselves out, but nothing like this. And not so many in such a short time.”

“I thought they might be attracted to the lantern, but it’s not even lit up yet,” Baekhyun said. “Maybe it’s the sunlight reflecting off the lens.”

“They're not insects, Baekhyun,” Chanyeol replied wearily. There was an edge to his normally gentle voice that Baekhyun had never heard before, and it stung him a little. “I guess they’re probably just disoriented.”

“Call me crazy, but somehow I feel like they might be doing it on purpose,” Baekhyun said. He thought about the seal-woman’s warning when she had visited him that night. A shiver went down his spine. “Like they’re attacking us. Maybe they’re mad about something.” 

For a while it was quiet again, and Baekhyun felt relief begin to flood through him. Maybe it was over. He caught Chanyeol’s eye, but Chanyeol only looked back at him and shrugged.

Hesitating, Baekhyun ventured closer to the glass to look outside. “Oh, shit.”

"What?" Chanyeol hurried over to stand next to him. "What’s happening now?”

As soon as he said this, he fell silent. Baekhyun didn't have the heart to turn his head and see what the keeper's face might look like as he beheld the frightening spectacle outside the lighthouse. He could barely tear his own eyes away from the sight. Now there were hundreds of birds circling the lighthouse tower. All kinds of seabirds: albatrosses, gulls, terns, petrels and gannets. It was chaos, with birds all squawking and smacking into each other, some of them spiralling down to the ground below.

"Shit," Baekhyun said again, with slightly more emphasis. He couldn't think of anything else to say.

On a normal day, Chanyeol might have gently chided him for swearing, and told him to say ‘sugar’ or ‘shipwreck’ or something of the like instead, and Baekhyun would have laughed at him. But at that moment they didn’t have the time or the presence of mind, because the flock of seabirds began to collide with the lantern room windows — not one by one, but all at once. Hundreds of them slammed into the panes and fell, sliding down the glass, and soon enough their limp bodies began to pile up along the floor of the gallery outside. 

Each time a bird pounded against the window panes, Baekhyun felt the need to reflexively cover his face with one hand, as though one of them might come shooting through the glass at any moment. “You don’t think they could break through the window, do you?”

“I don’t know. I really hope not,” Chanyeol said, and cried out in surprise when another much larger bird slammed into the window right in front of him. “Was that a pelican..?”

Baekhyun saw that it was indeed a pelican. It lay on the floor of the gallery, writhing and flapping through its last moments. Not all of the birds flew straight into the tower; some hovered around it, as though circling some kind of prey, and then rocketed toward the lighthouse like heat-seeking missiles. 

"They're all going to die," Baekhyun said, in a voice so small that he wasn’t sure Chanyeol would even hear him. "They're killing themselves..”

"It almost seems like some kind of plague.” Chanyeol stood there with both hands on top of his head, pulling at his hair in desperation. "We're going to have to think of a way to get rid of them. If they keep slamming into the glass like that, they might break it. Worse, they might get in here and damage the lens. We can't let that happen.”

Almost as soon as he said this, they both screamed at the tinkling smash of breaking glass, and a low-flying whoosh of air right above their heads. Baekhyun looked up to see that an albatross, flying at incredible speed, had shot right through the window. They both ducked down to avoid it. Disoriented and injured, it flew around the inside of the lantern room in crooked circles, up and down like a damaged plane. Finally it crashed into the lens, shattering several of the panels, sending pieces of glass catapulting across the room. The body remained stuck there, twitching for a moment, until it stopped moving.

“We need to cover that hole,” Baekhyun yelled, trying to make himself heard over the terrifying racket of screeching, shrieking and wing-beating. “Or they might—”

He could not finish his sentence; a gull flew in through the hole made by the albatross, slicing its own flesh on the jagged edges of the glass. It flew haphazardly around the room just as the albatross had, and then nosedived straight into the floor. Bloodied grey and white feathers floated through the air, settling like snowflakes.

“When are they going to stop?” Now Chanyeol had tears in his eyes. Jim had apparently got wind of all the commotion, and had come up to the lantern room to see what was happening. He ran around in circles, barking and howling, jumping up to snap at the invading birds as they flew inside the lighthouse.

"I don’t think they will,” Baekhyun said. “They’ll probably keep going until they’re all dead." 

Chanyeol's tear-streaked face suddenly lit up with an idea. “If you go downstairs to the storeroom, there should be a couple of spare oars in there. If any more birds fly inside the lighthouse, we can use the oars to bat them away from the lamp,” he said. “Take Jim with you and shut him up somewhere while you’re at it -- we don’t need him running around up here. He’s only going to create more confusion. In the meantime, I’ll stay here, and try to keep any more birds from coming in.”

Baekhyun grabbed Jim by the collar and began to lead him away; he dragged him towards the door leading out into the stairwell, the dog’s paws scrabbling against the stone floor. Jim was fortunately well-trained and mostly went without complaint, although not before aiming a few more indignant barks at the feathered enemy. Baekhyun pulled him downstairs to the bathroom and shut him up inside it, muttering "sorry, boy, but I have no choice," and then he went down to the storeroom to fetch the oars.

When he came back up to the lantern room, he saw that Chanyeol had resorted to improvising with a piece of a chair, which he had apparently smashed against the floor to use as a weapon. When he saw Baekhyun walk in with the two wooden oars, he hurried over, tossing the piece of broken chair aside. Baekhyun stared at the carnage on the floor as he waded through it, horrified at how many more dead or dying birds there seemed to be now. He’d only been gone for a few minutes.

"Thanks for that," Chanyeol said breathlessly, snatching one of the oars out of Baekhyun's grasp — this was no time for niceties. The abruptness of the action snapped Baekhyun out of his horrified daze, and he walked nearer to the broken window where the birds were entering, standing a way behind Chanyeol so he wouldn't get knocked out accidentally by the oar he’d begun swinging wildly around. He began swinging his own oar at any birds who flew toward the lens, hitting nearly all of them and sending them flying back against the windows. He almost wanted to laugh at how absurd and terrifying the whole thing was — but to do so, he thought, would probably be giving in to hysteria.

It really was a terrible sight, watching Chanyeol stand there in front of the lens with his oar, battering down whatever birds he could hit as they flew in, tears streaming down his face as he did so; every so often, he had to stop and wipe them away just to be able to see properly. Baekhyun knew how much he loved animals, and how traumatic the ordeal must be for him. The sight of him crying like that made Baekhyun want to cry too, but he didn’t. If he started, he knew he probably wouldn’t stop, and this was no time to be overcome by emotion.

After what felt like an eternity, the noise and confusion began to settle down. The dead and dying birds now vastly outnumbered those that were still circling the lighthouse, and eventually those last few stragglers, as though suddenly released from whatever trance they were in, abruptly turned away from their target and flew off out to sea. The din of shrieking and cawing and hundreds of beating wings faded away, and was replaced once more by perfect, glorious silence. Baekhyun had never heard a sound — or the lack of a sound — so wonderful in all his life. He closed his eyes and stood there with his head tilted up to the ceiling, drinking it in. It was so blissful that for a moment he nearly forgot everything that had just happened.

He opened his eyes again when he heard Chanyeol sinking to his knees, the blood-splattered oar dropping onto the floor next to him. His face, which had been red and shining with the sweat of exertion only minutes before, now looked pale and waxen. He curled up into a ball and lay there with his eyes squeezed shut, and his breathing grew harsh and laboured. Soon Baekhyun realised he was crying again, but crying hard this time, his whole body wracked with convulsive sobbing. He stood there watching quietly, unsure of what to do. 

Eventually he kneeled down on the floor next to Chanyeol, rubbing his back with one hand. “Chanyeol, are you alright? It’s okay... I’m here. I think it’s over.”

Chanyeol was quiet for a second or two, still drawing wet, shuddering breaths, and then at last he let out a long and steady exhale. “Yeah, I know.” He opened his puffy, red-rimmed eyes to look up at Baekhyun, offering him a weak smile. “I’m fine.”

 

After allowing themselves to recover a little from the ordeal, they covered up the broken windows with chicken wire — a temporary fix until the Board could send someone out to repair them — and then they had the grim job of gathering up all the casualties. After the number of dead birds exceeded a hundred, Baekhyun thought it best to stop counting. They took them out to the end of the jetty — bags and bags full of them, so many that they had to take several trips just to carry them all, and there they gave them a solemn burial at sea. As the birds first landed on the water, they looked like crumpled pieces of paper floating on the surface, until at last they began to sink down into the blue.

Chanyeol pulled a limp albatross from one of the bags — the last bird left — and cradled it in his arms like a child. It was large and snowy-white, with a curved pink bill. “This is a wandering albatross,” he said to Baekhyun. “Their feathers are spotted when they’re younger; they only grow pure white like this as they age. It could be really old, for all we know.” He bent down and gently lowered it into the water.

“Farewell, little sailors," he murmured. They stood there side by side in reverent silence for a while, watching the last of the birds as they disappeared.

Baekhyun turned to look at Chanyeol curiously. “Sailors..?”

“It’s one of those old tales you hear sometimes,” Chanyeol replied, with a little smile curling up one side of his mouth. “That seabirds have the souls of sailors.”

“Kind of like how the seal-folk have the souls of people who have drowned at sea?”

"Yes," Chanyeol said quietly, “a bit like that.”

Baekhyun nodded and turned his head away, looking out at the sea instead. It was so flat and calm that he almost couldn’t believe the terrifying events of that day had happened. If Chanyeol hadn’t been there to experience it with him, he might have believed that he’d dreamt the whole thing.

Suddenly he felt a warm hand squeezing his, and turned to look at Chanyeol again. Chanyeol looked back at him with a soft expression. He stared at Baekhyun unapologetically, for a long time, until Baekhyun started to feel his face warming up.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked. Shyly he turned his head away to look out at the ocean again; at least that wouldn’t make him so flustered.

“Because I’m about to do something that I hope neither of us will regret,” Chanyeol said. He took a step closer, and Baekhyun’s heart began to pound.

With one hand underneath Baekhyun’s chin, Chanyeol closed his eyes, leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips. When he pulled away again his eyes were still closed, and when they fluttered open at last there was such tenderness in them that it made Baekhyun feel breathless.

“What was that for?” he asked, trying to hold back a smile, and failing.

Chanyeol’s face fell slightly. “Did you not like it..?”

“No, I never said that... I liked it a lot. I just wasn’t really expecting it.”

“You had no idea that I like you?” Chanyeol looked skeptical. “And the whole time I thought I was being pathetically obvious. Maybe I needn’t have worried.”

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Baekhyun asked, and Chanyeol answered with a shrug.

"I don't know. I didn’t think you’d be interested in an old man like me," he said, smiling. "Also, I was trying to remain professional with you. And now, unfortunately, I think I have overstepped the boundaries of that professionalism."

"You’re not old -- you’re hot," Baekhyun blurted out, before he could stop himself, which made Chanyeol burst out laughing.

“Those things aren't mutually exclusive, Baekhyun," he said, his dark eyes crinkling with amusement. "One can be both old _and_ hot. But I suppose I should be flattered that you think I'm hot at all."

“Sorry. I can’t say anyone’s ever really liked me that way before, so I'm not really sure how to handle it,” Baekhyun said, laughing shyly. “At least, not that I’m aware of.” He looked down at his feet, shuffling around on them a bit until Chanyeol put a hand under his chin and made him look up again. 

“It’s just that for a while there, when those birds were all hurling themselves to their deaths like that, I was starting to think that maybe the world was ending,” he said, looking deep into Baekhyun’s eyes. “And just in case it really _is_ ending, I would hate for it to do so without me having the chance to tell you how I feel about you.”

Baekhyun smiled, and allowed his arms to settle around Chanyeol’s waist, pulling him closer. “And how _do_ you feel about me?”

“I think I’m falling for you,” Chanyeol whispered; he leaned down until his forehead touched Baekhyun’s, but did not kiss him. “But it’s like a continuous falling... I just keep falling and falling. And right when I think I can’t possibly fall anymore, you go and prove me wrong.”

“Like being sucked into a black hole?” Baekhyun asked.

“Hmm… something like that.” Chanyeol laughed softly. “Though I think I phrased it in a slightly nicer way.”

“Well, I can only speak for myself here,” Baekhyun said, “but I don’t regret you kissing me.” He looked into Chanyeol’s eyes and smiled. “I don’t regret it at all. I think we should do it a lot more.”

Chanyeol grabbed both of his hands, smiling back at him. He leaned in to give Baekhyun another kiss — very soft, but longer and deeper than the first — and whispered, “so do I.”


	6. Chapter 6

**VI.**

_Dear Taeng,_

_I think the main reason I was drawn to Redhill is because I have so many questions that have never been answered, and no one left around me who can provide those answers. I’ve since realised that I’m going to have to find them by myself, and that some of the questions may never be answered at all._

_Everyone has a birth story — an origin story — except for me. For a long time I made myself believe that I had been born in the water, because it was the only place I felt like I belonged. That was why I told the kids at school this story when they asked me where I was born — knowing full well that I was adopted, and that asking that question of me was like opening a trap door and waiting for me to walk right into it. When I told them my own version of where I had come from, I could take back that little part of myself that had been stolen from me; I saw the look of confusion in their faces, and for the first time I knew that I had won._

_It wasn’t that my family made me feel unwanted. They made me feel so wanted that in my earlier years, I really believed I was one of them. In some ways, I think that maybe they were overcompensating. But what is worse: to know all along that you are an impostor, or to find out later that everything you thought you knew about yourself was false? And if I had never found out at all, would I have been a happier person... or at least a more settled person? Would I have felt like a person at all, instead of this slippery, skinless, half-formed thing that I am now; and would I be able to sleep at night without my mind trying to escape to somewhere else, somewhere far away, beyond the confines of my self-awareness? These are things I still wonder about after so many years._

_And now I have to live with the knowledge that I am nothing but a usurper. I was taken into that loving home, and one by one they all dropped off, vanishing into thin air, being pulled beneath the waves. I am the only man of that empty house. There is no one left; there is just me, always getting into places where I am not supposed to be._

_Sorry for offloading on you like this; once I start thinking about it, it can be very hard to stop. Hopefully next time I write to you, I will be in a happier place._

_Much love,_

_Seal Boy_

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

It took a few weeks for the mere sight or sound of a bird to stop making Baekhyun’s gut knot up with anxiety, but in all other ways, he had grown to love their little seagirt home. The thought of ever leaving the island seemed unthinkable now; he felt as much a part of Redhill as it felt a part of him. He couldn’t explain the feeling that gripped him: this love for the ocean, the need to be near it at all times. Sometimes he wondered if wearing the sealskin had done something to him -- if it had altered his true nature somehow -- because he felt like the sea was calling to him constantly. It whispered in his ear in the dead of night, during the night-watch when all was quiet, stirring in him the temptation to leave the light unattended and go down to the beach. 

But Baekhyun wasn't fool enough to go swimming in the sea after dark. He knew well enough how that was bound to end.

Even so, it was hard to keep himself away. On those mornings when he had just finished a night shift, he would run down to the beach as soon as the light was put out, strip all his clothes off and throw himself at the ocean. The sense of elation he got from doing so was indescribable; he had never felt like that before, so light and free and clear-headed. Many times, he forgot that he had to come up to breathe, until his body finally decided it would remind him — only then would he surface, his lungs begging for air. Whenever he was in the water, he felt like he was meant to be there; that it was where he belonged. Maybe this was a dangerous way to feel, but it didn’t keep him from coming back for more.

On those days when the weather was dismal and he wasn’t able to swim -- when the sound of the sea calling out to him was especially unbearable -- he drowned it out by filling up the bathtub, climbing in and submerging himself. This brought some relief, however temporary; provided he was underwater, it seemed that the sea’s hypnotic song could not reach him.

There were other times when the ocean didn’t seem so kind, particularly when signs of its hidden terrors were washed ashore. It was hard to stare into the jaws of a monster that big and walk away from it unaffected. He would walk along the sand and find all sorts of things -- drowned birds; giant squid beaks; floating remains of vessels come to grief; dolphin and seal carcasses; old bones, bleached and stripped by the sun and salt water — whether animal or human, who could tell? One time a wave brought in the head of a pelican, washing it up right in front of his feet; the bill had been bitten off by something (a shark, perhaps?), and it was only identifiable by a few scraggly white feathers and one large, staring, yellow-ringed eye. Disturbed, he had walked quickly away from it, but couldn’t keep himself from turning around once more to look at it. Somehow it seemed to him a portent; but a portent of what, he didn’t know.

Sometimes he felt stranded, like a castaway; living at the lighthouse was almost like living on a great ship going nowhere, and it was only the captain who could steer them both through the worst of it. But he was getting used to doing things on his own, and on those occasions when Chanyeol pulled him into a hug, kissed his forehead and told him he was proud of him, even the loneliest nights spent keeping watch seemed worth it. 

 

At the end of one of his solitary night-shifts, Baekhyun came down to Chanyeol’s bedroom in the morning and crept into his bed, where he lay down on his side and watched him as he slept. This was a habit he had recently adopted. There was something sacred about watching Chanyeol sleep: the strands of hair curled around his face, his expression of peaceful innocence, the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. But the best part about it was always the sleepy little smile he gave Baekhyun when he woke up, before pulling him down for a soft kiss. 

Baekhyun could easily lose track of how many minutes he spent like that; it could have been hours, and it would have been all the same to him. Sometimes he liked to stroke Chanyeol’s hair; other times he would kiss his forehead or his closed eyelids, or cuddle him from behind. Whatever he did went largely unnoticed. Maybe Chanyeol didn’t sleep much, but when he did, he slept like the dead.

Even watching him now, Baekhyun could tell just how deeply asleep he was. Soon his breathing became shallower; each inhale and exhale seemed further and further apart. Eventually Baekhyun realised, with one of his hands on Chanyeol’s chest, that it had stopped rising and falling at all. 

He wasn’t breathing.

Alarmed, he grabbed one of Chanyeol’s shoulders, shaking him gently. “Chanyeol, wake up!”

Chanyeol sat up with a gasping breath, like someone coming up for air after being underwater for a long time. He hunched over with one hand clutching his chest. “What?” he rasped, still panting, “what happened..?”

“I thought you’d stopped breathing in your sleep,” Baekhyun said. “Sorry if I freaked you out.”

With a sigh of relief, Chanyeol collapsed against the pillow again. He closed his eyes, inhaling and exhaling slowly. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “You just scared the absolute crap out of me, that’s all.”

Baekhyun felt a bit shaken afterwards, but his worrying was needless; after giving himself a chance to wake up completely, Chanyeol seemed perfectly fine, and was soon acting like his old self again.

“It’s such a nice day today,” he said later that morning, while standing in front of the porthole window in the kitchen, holding his usual cup of coffee. He was right -- the sky outside was bluer than a dream. “Why don’t we go out and do something fun, for once? Let’s make the most of the warm weather. It’ll be gone before we know it.”

Baekhyun shrugged. “What did you have in mind?”

Chanyeol’s idea, it turned out, was to go out in Baekhyun’s boat and spend a few hours diving around the reef. Baekhyun didn’t need much convincing, and soon they were out on the ocean, heading towards the vast underwater wall of coral that skirted the island. It was a beautiful sunny day, with just the right amount of breeze to keep it from being uncomfortably hot, and they dropped the anchor a safe but swimmable distance away from the reef's edge.

Baekhyun pulled his t-shirt over his head, throwing it onto the floor of the boat. He turned around to check if Chanyeol was ready, and caught him standing there wearing nothing but his sandals, which he promptly kicked off.

Baekhyun knew he was staring, but it was hard not to. "Um. Why are you..?"

“...Naked?” Chanyeol finished the sentence for him. He rolled his shorts up into a ball and tossed them in Baekhyun’s direction. "Why aren’t you?”

"Do you want me to be?" 

"Yes. I would like that very much.” Chanyeol smirked, biting his lip, which Baekhyun always found infuriatingly sexy. “And I think you'll like it too. It’s very… what’s the word I’m looking for? Liberating.”

Baekhyun wasn’t a stranger to the joys of swimming naked, but it was a whim he had only ever indulged while alone. He stood there clutching at the waistband of his shorts, hesitating to pull them down. "I don't have a problem with _you_ seeing me naked,” he said. “But what if someone _else_ sees me?"

"There shouldn't be anyone else around.” Chanyeol reached out to grab one of Baekhyun’s hands, pulling him closer. “Anyway, you're so gorgeous that anyone who does lay an eye on you will probably drop dead instantly,” he whispered, softly kissing the side of Baekhyun’s neck. “So you have nothing to worry about.”

Baekhyun rolled his eyes. "Smooth-talker," he said, smiling.

Chanyeol kissed him one more time, and then he reached for his snorkel mask. Instead of putting it on, he separated the breathing tube from the goggles and tossed it aside.

“Don’t you need that to breathe?” Baekhyun asked.

Chanyeol shook his head. “I prefer it without. I want to go deeper than the surface, and it just gets in the way,” he said, pulling the mask on over his head. Winking at Baekhyun through the blue plastic lens, he walked over to the edge of the boat and threw himself into the water.

“Hey, wait up!” Suddenly forgetting about his shyness, Baekhyun quickly shed all his clothes. He put the mouthpiece of his snorkel in, only to change his mind and remove the tube at the last second. What was good enough for Chanyeol was good enough for him.

Despite the warm weather, the water was cold when he first jumped in, and it took a moment to adjust. He took his first breath and went under, following Chanyeol towards the reef. As they got closer, the view left him breathless: he could see little fishes of all colours, swimming in and out between anemones and branches of coral. There were stingrays soaring above him, and small transparent jellyfish, and giant spotted cuttlefish swishing their frilled skirts, all foraging among the swaying seagrasses. Above it all, the sun shone down on them through the surface of the water.

They swam around part of a ship’s hull, crusted over by rust and barnacles, sea-plants trailing all over it like ivy on an old castle. When they both came up for air again, Chanyeol told Baekhyun that it was called the Carpentaria; it had run aground about a century ago, but no one would dare to remove the wreck, he said, for fear it would damage the surrounding coral. Instead they had left it there, and it had become a kind of extension of the reef, a makeshift home for all sorts of marine life. Baekhyun peered into a couple of its portholes, but it was too dark inside to really see anything. Something about the darkness made him shiver a little, and he swam away quickly to find Chanyeol.

He found him a little way over — he had his back to Baekhyun, hovering over a wall of coral, inspecting it closely. Instead of swimming up to him, Baekhyun allowed himself to simply float there for a while; he only wanted to watch Chanyeol as he moved through the water. He looked beautiful swimming around like that, like he was at home. He really did look free. His long dark hair trailed behind him, shining like black silk in the sun-drenched water, and it sounded like he was humming something happily, which made for an eerie but tranquil sound. Maybe he felt the same way in the water that Baekhyun felt, and this was how they were all meant to be: cradled by the sea, re-wombed in its gentleness. Baekhyun knew he was supposed to fear and respect the ocean, but then there were moments like this one, when its beauty made that fear hard to muster. 

But out here in the middle of it, he knew how quickly that could all change. He thought about the strange dream of the frightening seal-woman and shuddered, pushing the image out of his head, replacing it with beautiful things instead — schools of tiny silver fish glimmering in the greenish light, and the intriguing, anatomically-reminiscent structures of all the corals. He loved how some of them looked like giant brains, and others branched out in an arterial way, like the veins of the sea. Only when he was in the ocean like this did he see it for what it really was: a living, breathing being in its own right. The reef was a thing of such delicate, intricate design that it was easy to forget — even with the sobering presence of the wreck lurking behind them — just how dangerous it could be.

When they both came up for air again, Chanyeol lifted his mask off his face, pushing it up to the top of his head. "How long can you hold your breath for?"

“Dunno,” Baekhyun said. “Not very long, probably.”

Chanyeol had a glint of mischief in his eye. “Let's see who can stay under the longest.” 

Baekhyun groaned at the idea. “Why does it have to be a competition..?”

“Because it’s more fun that way.”

Baekhyun didn’t know if he agreed with that. But he couldn't resist the challenge, and so they went under again. The first time, he didn’t even last a minute before he had to come up, gasping for breath. He felt around beneath him for a sandbar on which to stand, and waited there for Chanyeol to finish. He could see the dark shape of him still floating under there; every so often a bubble or two of air would rise up to the surface, but that was the only sign of life.

It dawned on him that Chanyeol must have been underwater for at least a couple of minutes by now. He had a flashback of watching Chanyeol sleep that morning, when it seemed like he had stopped breathing, and he began to feel uneasy again. Soon the uneasiness switched over into panic. He ducked under, grabbed Chanyeol by the shoulders and shook him until he surfaced with a spray of water droplets, flicking tendrils of wet hair out of his face. 

“What? What's wrong?" He seemed oblivious as to why Baekhyun had disrupted him — perhaps even slightly irritated. 

“Where the hell were you?” Baekhyun found it hard to hide the note of panic in his voice. “I thought you’d drowned or something.”

“It’s fine… I used to do a lot of skin-diving back in the day, so I can easily stay under for a couple of minutes. Your body just needs to gradually get used to higher levels of carbon dioxide.” Chanyeol’s smile widened into an obnoxious grin. “How sweet of you to worry about me, though.”

“I wasn’t,” Baekhyun mumbled, “not really.”

“Whatever you say.” Baekhyun could tell from Chanyeol’s smug expression that he didn’t believe him. “So -- round two?"

Chanyeol went back down before Baekhyun had a chance to reply, and so he had little choice but to re-submerge himself too. Under the water, Chanyeol’s expression remained serene, his hair floating up in a black cloud above his head; he looked at Baekhyun with gentle eyes, and then he closed them again. Baekhyun closed his eyes too, scrunching them up tight, trying to ignore the pressure building inside his chest. He began to feel lightheaded. It had only been about a minute, he guessed; the discomfort was such that he could no longer keep count of the seconds. Soon he would have to come up for air. He opened his eyes and finally let the breath he was holding out of his mouth in a stream of bubbles; they floated around his head, fat and silvery, before skittering upwards, bursting on the watery ceiling above.

He was about to give up, but to his surprise, Chanyeol surrendered before him. Baekhyun didn't even have time to burst out of the water and crow about his unlikely victory before the keeper was back under again. He leaned in, holding on to both of Baekhyun’s shoulders. Then he pressed his lips against Baekhyun's — soft but quick, gently blowing in a lungful of air as he kissed him — and rose up to the surface.

Baekhyun followed soon afterwards, gasping for breath. "What was that about?" he asked, yanking his mask up and away from his face.

"I saw that you were stubborn enough to push yourself to the edge so you could win, even though your suffering was written all over your face," Chanyeol said. He chuckled softly, reaching over to push aside the wet hair plastered to Baekhyun's forehead. "So I helped you out a little." 

In a way, Baekhyun was indignant; he felt cheated out of a clean win, but then maybe this was the only way he could have beaten Chanyeol in the first place. The whole time they were underwater, Chanyeol hadn’t even looked the slightest bit uncomfortable. If it was true about the skin-diving, then Baekhyun could only guess that this had done wonders for his lung capacity. He also knew that Chanyeol was a lot fitter than he was, though with the amount of physical work he was now doing in his duties as a lighthouse-keeper, Baekhyun could already see the vast improvement in his own fitness, at least compared to what it had been before.

“Hmmph. Not like you to pass up a victory,” he said, shooting Chanyeol a skeptical look. 

Chanyeol laughed again. "If I win your heart, then it will be well worth the sacrifice," he said, his voice lowering to a whisper. With both hands on Baekhyun’s hips, he leaned in for another salty kiss, his tongue unfurling like a petal inside Baekhyun's mouth. His lips were so deliciously soft that Baekhyun only belatedly realised the hands on his hips had migrated downwards; they cupped the backs of his thighs just beneath his bottom, hoisting him up. Wrapping his legs around Chanyeol’s waist, Baekhyun groaned into the kiss, a shiver running through him at the feeling of Chanyeol’s bare skin against his. To be caressed simultaneously by Chanyeol and the sea was a pleasure unlike anything he had ever felt; he wanted to lean in for another kiss, but Chanyeol suddenly released him and sank underwater again, swimming around somewhere near his feet. 

Baekhyun began to squirm with laughter as he felt Chanyeol circling him, leaving little kisses on his legs, his belly, his back — all over the submerged part of his body. Then he rushed up out of the water and stole another quick kiss from Baekhyun’s lips. The whole thing left Baekhyun breathless and excited, at least until Chanyeol pulled away and, cupping his hands together, used them to suction up and squirt seawater into his face, making him shriek embarrassingly in surprise. 

Laughing wickedly, Chanyeol hurled himself back underwater and torpedoed away in the direction of the anchored boat. Baekhyun pulled his mask back on and followed after him, uttering a blood-curdling battle cry at the top of his lungs before he dived under.

 

Back at the boat, they dressed themselves and began to make their way around the edge of the reef, heading back towards the island. Chanyeol skippered the boat this time, whistling all the while, and Baekhyun could tell that he was happy. 

“We should do this again someday,” he said, and his heart fluttered a little when Chanyeol aimed his beautiful smile at him.

“We should indeed.” Chanyeol leaned over to steal another kiss, and Baekhyun let him. It was all the things a good kiss should be — soft and sweet, a little bit hungry, and of course, nowhere near long enough.

"I hope you don't do that while you're on the road," Baekhyun said. “Kiss people while you’re driving.” In spite of his lecturing, he couldn’t keep himself from unconsciously leaning in for more.

“I don’t make a habit of kissing many people. Only the ones I really like,” Chanyeol replied, winking at him. “So consider yourself lucky.”

Baekhyun jokingly rolled his eyes, but deep down he really did consider himself lucky. Looking into the water, he saw a couple of seals swimming alongside the boat. They played peek-a-boo, popping their heads up and then ducking under again.

“Look at that… we've made some new friends," Chanyeol said. To Baekhyun’s surprise, he began to sing to the seals. It was a song with no words — just unintelligible sounds, but the melody was hauntingly beautiful. It reminded Baekhyun of going to church with his mother and Minseok when they were younger, and on one occasion he had heard a member of the congregation speaking in tongues. At the time, he had found it both enthralling and disturbing, but what Chanyeol sang was different. It had a lovely ethereal sound to it, and Baekhyun found it soothing to listen to. Even the seals seemed to like it; they almost looked like they were hypnotised by it, and loitered around the boat until Chanyeol was done.

“What were you singing to them?” Baekhyun asked, after Chanyeol had finished his song.

Chanyeol shrugged. “Just random noises… it’s nonsense, really. I only did it because they like music.”

“How do you know they like music..?”

“You don’t have to be human to like music. Even plants like music.” Stopping the boat for a moment, Chanyeol leaned out over the gunwale and trailed his hand along the sparkling surface of the water. One of the seals let him rub its head briefly; it closed its eyes as though enjoying itself, and then it went back under. The seals all swam away from the boat then, partaking in a game of chase amongst themselves. Baekhyun tried to catch a glimpse of their tails, in case one of them might be his friend Moby, but he didn’t get a chance before they were gone.

 

They were nearing the outer edges of the reef when Baekhyun heard something; it sounded like a voice calling out to them. Not just one voice — _voices_. There were more than one. 

"Hey," Chanyeol said, "look over there."

Baekhyun looked up to where he was pointing. There was a fishing boat up on the reef, with two men standing in it, waving frantically in their direction. They were yelling something, but they were a little too far away for Baekhyun to hear them properly. He squinted towards them, holding a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. "Looks like they're in trouble,” he said.

"Yeah. Probably got stuck on the reef." Chanyeol began steering Little Fearless towards them. "Let’s go see if we can help them out.”

As they drew nearer, Baekhyun could see that the two men waving them down were actually two boys. At a glance, they were probably as young as sixteen or seventeen. One was tall and slim, with a slightly haughty-looking expression; the other was shorter, with straight brows, and lips that curled up a little at the edges.

“Hello there,” Chanyeol said, “do you need some assistance?”

“We came out to do some fishing, and this dope here — who claims he can drive a boat — drove us up onto the reef,” the shorter boy told him. “And now we’re stranded. We’ve been stuck here for over an hour.”

The taller boy grumbled at this accusation. “Hey, who are you calling a dope..?”

Chanyeol nodded. “Okay, not to worry,” he said. “Everything will be fine. Just don’t try to go anywhere, or you might do more damage to your boat. Do you have a radio in your cabin? Have you tried calling the coast guard?”

The taller boy looked sheepish. He hesitated for a moment, scratching the back of his neck, and then said, “well, yeah, we have one. But we're not really sure how to use it, because it’s not our boat.”

Chanyeol blinked at him. “Whose boat is it, then?” he asked, frowning.

“It’s his dad’s boat," the shorter boy said. “Or it _was_ his dad’s boat. Now it’s the reef’s boat.”

“Well, that’s okay. We’ve got a radio over here. I can do it for you,” Chanyeol said. “I’ll just need the name and registration number of your boat.”

“‘Buoy Oh Buoy’ is the name. I think the number's on the side of the hull somewhere,” the taller boy said. “By the way, I’m Sehun." He placed a hand on the shoulder of the shorter boy, who playfully shook him off. "And this is my shitty best friend Jongdae.”

Chanyeol nodded, looking thoughtful as he surveyed their boat. “How big is it? About a fifteen-footer?”

“Sixteen.” Sehun looked a bit irritated, as though Chanyeol slightly underestimating the length of the boat bothered him. But if Chanyeol even noticed his irritation, he didn’t seem to care.

“Right. My mistake,” he said jovially. “I’ll tell you what -- why don’t I come over there and show you how to work the radio? For future reference.”

“I don’t think he’ll be needing the future reference,” Jongdae said. “His dad won’t let him anywhere near another boat when he sees what he’s done to this one.”

“Shut it,” Sehun replied, glaring at his friend. To Chanyeol, he said, “what do you think will happen to the boat?”

Chanyeol shrugged. “The reef is protected, so it's hard to say. They'll probably send someone over to try and tow you out, but if they come out here and decide they can’t remove the boat without destroying the surrounding coral, then it's possible that they'll have to leave it where it is. In some cases, they might try to sink it.”

Sehun’s deadpan expression morphed into one of mild horror. “What do you mean? They can’t do that.” He sat down as the news sank in, holding his head in his hands. “Shit. I've really done it this time, haven’t I?”

“This boat is Sehun’s dad's pride and joy,” Jongdae explained to Chanyeol. “So it’s safe to say that he’s probably gonna get his arse kicked.”

“What do you mean, 'probably'? I am for sure gonna get my arse kicked,” Sehun muttered. “I’ll get my arse kicked right over to the mainland when he finds out.”

“Are you two from Ayr as well?” Baekhyun asked, and Sehun nodded. Shooting an amused glance at Baekhyun, Chanyeol hopped into the water and swam the short distance over to the other boat, where the two young men helped him climb in. The three of them disappeared inside the cabin. Baekhyun could hear snatches of what Chanyeol said as he radioed the coast guard, spelling out the name of the boat to them, and describing their location and the boat’s appearance. 

When they all finally emerged from the cabin again, Sehun looked sullen. “Can’t we just go with you in your boat?” he was saying. “Who knows how long they’ll keep us waiting out here.”

“You heard what the gentleman said; you’re not supposed to abandon a vessel that’s not actively sinking, unless instructed to do so." Chanyeol's tone was firm but kind. “I’m sorry, but you’ll need to stay here until they send someone out to assist you. I’m certain your boat’s not going to be sinking anytime soon, so don’t worry about that. In fact, I can vouch for it by staying right here with you until help arrives.”

“Huh?” Baekhyun blurted out, as soon as he heard Chanyeol say this. “But… shouldn’t we be getting back to the lighthouse?”

Chanyeol jumped into the water, and swam back over to the boat to speak to him. “I’m going to stay here with the boys until the coast guard sends someone over to pick them up,” he said. “Is that alright with you?

Baekhyun hesitated. “I suppose so. What should I do, wait here with you?”

Chanyeol shook his head. “I want you to take the boat back to Redhill. Without me.”

“But… I can’t go back without you. How will you get home?”

“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to,” Chanyeol said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I can’t leave those poor kids stranded here... they obviously have no idea what they’re doing. I'm not entirely sure either of them even has a boat license." His expression softened a little when he saw the concern on Baekhyun's face. "Look, it'll be fine; I’ll just stay until help comes, and then I’ll find a way back to Redhill — I can probably get a ride over with someone from the coast guard when they come to get the boys. Anyway, it’ll be time to light up in a couple of hours; one of us needs to be back at the lighthouse well before then. I can’t risk us getting in trouble with the Board if we run behind schedule."

Chanyeol took a step closer and pulled Baekhyun into his arms, pressing his lips against the top of his head. “I know what I’m doing, Baekhyun,” he whispered, and then he held Baekhyun’s face in both hands and kissed him softly on the lips. “I promise I’ll be back as soon as I can. You really have nothing to worry about.”

“Pardon me for interrupting… but did you say before that you’re from the lighthouse?” Jongdae called out from the other boat, interrupting their little moment. “Are you by any chance referring to the Redhill Lighthouse?”

“Yes,” Chanyeol said, raising an eyebrow at him. “Why?”

“So you’re the Redhill Keeper, then.” Jongdae looked like the colour was starting to drain from his face. Then he turned to look at Baekhyun. “Or are _you_ the Redhill Keeper..?”

Chanyeol opened his mouth to reply, but Baekhyun got in there first. “I’m the Redhill Keeper,” he said. “This young man here is my assistant.”

“Oh, he’s giving me way too much credit. I’m just his toy-boy lover.” Chanyeol said this with an entirely straight face, although the facade cracked a little when Baekhyun — trying his hardest to keep a snort of laughter in — jabbed an elbow into his ribs.

“But… you look so young.” Sehun studied Baekhyun with his eyes narrowed in confusion, and then he looked at Chanyeol again. “I thought the Redhill Keeper was meant to be some old greybeard with one eye.”

“Well, don’t believe everything you hear. But I’m older than I look, thanks to all the young virgin blood I bathe in daily,” Baekhyun said wryly. He swallowed a smirk and added, “on that note, I suppose I’d better return to my lair. I wish you both a safe return home. Don’t worry, I’m leaving you in very capable hands; if it was me accompanying you, you might not be so lucky.”

Now the two young men looked even more nervous, shifting uncomfortably on their feet and casting sideward glances at each other. Chanyeol, who looked like he was trying not to laugh again — and having a hard time of it — hopped into the water and swam back over to their boat. 

Still smiling to himself, Baekhyun started up his engine. “Get home safe, daddy,” Chanyeol called out to him, once he had reached Sehun’s boat again. He leaned over the gunwale and blew Baekhyun a kiss.

Baekhyun caught the kiss and pretended to eat it, then blew Chanyeol a kiss of his own. “You too, sweetheart.” With one last wave at Chanyeol and the two young fishermen, he headed back towards Redhill alone.

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

A few hours later, when it was time to light up, Chanyeol still hadn’t returned to the island. Baekhyun lit the lamp and sat up in the watch-room by himself, where he read a book to whittle away the time -- and didn’t retain a single word. The anxiety was a blessing, in a way, since it kept him from even coming close to drifting off during his watch. But at the same time, it was excruciating.

At around seven in the evening, he got a radio call. _“Redhill Light… Redhill Light, this is Buoy Oh Buoy. Over.”_

It was Chanyeol’s voice. Baekhyun snatched up the receiver and clung to it, gripping it so hard that his fingers began to hurt, though he didn’t realise it at first. “Buoy Oh Buoy, this is Redhill Light. Go ahead. Over.”

There was a crackling silence, and then Chanyeol’s voice came through again. _“Cannot tell you where we are right now, but I can promise you we are all safe and well. I will see you in the morning. Buoy Oh Buoy over and out.”_

“Wait! Chanyeol, where are you?” Forgetting everything he had learned about two-way radio etiquette, Baekhyun jammed his thumb down repeatedly on the push-to-talk button, but there was no reply. All he got was dead air.

The rest of the night seemed like it would never end. It was an agony not unlike that night he spent waiting for Minseok and his mother to come home; or when he had driven Little Fearless around in circles, trying to find his father after he had gone overboard — that agony of not knowing, which he had hoped never to endure again. Chanyeol had said they were fine, but Baekhyun would not believe it until he saw him walking through the front door with his own eyes. Anyway, of course he was ‘fine’; everyone was bloody fine — until they weren’t. As soon as the sun was up, he extinguished the lamp and walked over to the windows. He could already tell it was going to be another clear, beautiful day. The weather was obviously mocking him, being that glorious when he hadn’t slept in over 24 hours, and his insides were all gnawed at by worry, and he still had no idea where the hell Chanyeol was.

He was so sleep-deprived that when he saw a bright orange boat speeding towards the island about an hour later, he thought he was seeing things. But even after rubbing his eyes, it was still there, getting closer.

Such a bright orange, he thought. The coast guard boats were bright orange...

Suddenly forgetting how exhausted he was, Baekhyun bolted down the stairs, almost losing his footing and tumbling down them a couple of times. He took the semaphore flags with him out into the yard, and stood up on the clifftop facing the beach. The orange boat pulled up beside the jetty, and when he saw Chanyeol stepping out of it, he picked up the flags and began signalling wildly — the same message, over and over. He saw Chanyeol acknowledge him with a wave as he made his way along the path up to the lighthouse. 

Just before he arrived, Chanyeol stopped to pluck a tiny spray of pink flowers from a lantana bush, tucking it behind his ear. Wearing a huge smile, he walked over to Baekhyun, cupped his face in both hands and kissed him — hard, at first, and then a little softer.

Baekhyun smiled into the kiss. “You understood my message, then?”

“Well, if I may be allowed to nitpick… you actually signalled ‘I move you’ instead of ‘I love you’.” Chanyeol laughed softly, his breath warm on Baekhyun’s lips. “To make an L, your left arm should be at two o’clock, not three o’clock. But I got the gist of what you were trying to say.”

“What makes you think I was trying to say ‘I love you’..?”

Chanyeol pulled away for a second. “You weren’t..?” he asked, pouting.

“Yeah, I was. I’m just teasing you.” Wasting no more time, Baekhyun grabbed Chanyeol’s hand and began to pull him in the direction of the lighthouse. 

“Hold on a minute!” Chanyeol laughed. “Aren’t you even going to ask me where I’ve been for the past eighteen hours..?”

“Sure. And you can tell me all about it; but first I need a nap, because I haven’t slept in an age,” Baekhyun said. “And you’re gonna join me.”

They lay huddled in bed together right up until the afternoon, and Chanyeol told Baekhyun all about what had happened to him the day before. “So after you left to return to Redhill, we got a radio call from the coast guard over on Ayr. And first they’d planned to send out a smaller speedboat to come and get us, but that boat had some kind of problem with the engine, and so in the end they had to send a much larger boat instead. But then by the time they set off from Ayr, they ended up being unable to get near us because the water level was too low, and they risked running aground as well. So we had to wait there in the middle of the sea until the tide was high enough for them to come and get us. By that time, it was too dark for them to risk going around the reef to get me back to Redhill; so they took the three of us back to Ayr, and one of the guys from the rescue team kindly put me up for the night on his couch. Then he gave me a lift home first thing this morning.”

Chanyeol lay back on the bed with a sigh — as though recounting everything had drained all his energy — and reached over to run one hand through Baekhyun’s hair. “There you have it: my thrilling rescue story. Though I can see you’ve retained absolutely nothing of what I just told you, so maybe it wasn’t as thrilling as I thought,” he said, chuckling softly.

“What do you mean?” The whole time Chanyeol was talking, Baekhyun had been lying on his stomach with his face to one side, so that it was half-buried in the pillow. His eyelids kept drooping of their own accord. “I’m listening… I’m just resting my eyes, that’s all.”

“Sure you are,” Chanyeol said flatly. “Well, if you need a recap of all the interesting bits... the boat sank. The two boys were both eaten by sharks. My life was spared because the sharks were too full by the time they got to me. And then one of the sharks graciously offered me a ride home on its back. The end.”

“Now you’re just making fun of me,” Baekhyun said, rolling the one eye that was still open.

Chanyeol laughed and shook his head. “It’s okay,” he whispered, pulling Baekhyun closer to him. “I know you must be exhausted.”

“I’m just glad you radioed me... I was so worried.” Baekhyun snuggled against Chanyeol’s chest with a happy sigh. “Why didn’t you tell me where you were?”

“I did think about telling you… but I also knew that if I did, you would probably leave the lighthouse unattended to try and find us, and I couldn’t let you do that. You could have lost your job. And I could have lost mine too, for that matter.”

Baekhyun accepted this with a sigh. Chanyeol had a point — he probably _would_ have left the lighthouse. “I was just so afraid that something had happened to you. And the two boys, of course... I hope they’re both okay.”

“They were fine; tired and hungry, but in perfect health. I believe another vessel was meant to be sent out today, to see if they can remove Sehun’s boat from the reef. If he’s lucky, they might be able to get it out. Maybe he won’t get his butt kicked over to the mainland after all.” Chanyeol smiled. “By the way, they both asked me lots of interesting questions about you... like if you really are a cannibal, and if I was ever worried that you might murder me in my sleep. It was amusing to be on the other end of it, for once.” He leaned in towards Baekhyun again, hinting at his desire for another kiss, and said, “so you really missed me then, huh.”

Baekhyun leaned in too, but stopped just shy of letting their lips touch. “You know I did.”

“Aww, I was only gone for one night,” Chanyeol said. He began to stroke Baekhyun’s hair again. “Truth be told, I didn’t sleep last night either... I kept waking up in a panic to a pitch-dark room, thinking I’d fallen asleep on the job and the light had gone out. Then I’d remember where I was, and I’d be relieved; but I felt very lonely, knowing you were so far away.”

“Kiss me again?” Baekhyun whispered.

Chanyeol nodded; he leaned in and kissed Baekhyun softly on the mouth, one hand cradling the side of his face. 

Baekhyun rolled on top of him, kissing him over and over, unable to keep himself away. “Don’t ever leave me again,” he whispered between kisses. “Please…”

Chanyeol smiled against his lips. “You know I would never leave you willingly. Yesterday was an unavoidable situation.”

“Well, in that case, never leave me again, unless it’s an unavoidable situation,” Baekhyun said. He laid his head down on Chanyeol’s chest and closed his eyes.

“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

They were quiet for a moment, with Baekhyun relishing the warmth of Chanyeol’s chest against his cheek, and the sound of his heart, and the soft evenness of his breathing.

“I really wanted you with me, so very badly,” Chanyeol whispered. He kissed the top of Baekhyun’s head, wrapping both arms more tightly around his body. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

“My, my. Someone’s clingy today.” Baekhyun couldn’t help laughing at the way Chanyeol clung to him, like a giant lanky koala. But he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t missed him just as much. 

Chanyeol laughed. “Can you blame me?” 

“I guess not… I’m a pretty rare breed,” Baekhyun said, smiling to himself. “Ayr only has one Seal Boy, and you’ve managed to net him. You’re a lucky man.”

“I really am. I feel like the luckiest man in the world.”

Baekhyun rolled away from Chanyeol’s body, and Chanyeol hooked an arm around his waist, holding him from behind instead. For some reason, Baekhyun’s eyes began to well up. Maybe reality was finally sinking in, and he was simply experiencing sheer relief that Chanyeol had returned — that for the first time, everything had turned out alright. The tears fell inwards, trickling down over his nose and leaving dark spots on his pillow. 

“Hey, now… what’s wrong?” Chanyeol leaned in to press a soft kiss against his cheekbone. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just relieved.” Baekhyun quickly wiped his tears away, and cleared his throat. He felt shy and vulnerable. “I’m so happy you and the boys are alright; but at the same time, I can’t help thinking about my family. How they couldn’t be saved.”

“Ah... I see.” Chanyeol was lost in thought for a moment, rubbing gentle circles over Baekhyun’s stomach with one of his hands. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”

Baekhyun lay there for a while without answering. How could he describe it... the time when the void left behind by someone became more tangible than their presence? He could only process it in fragments of memory: his mother’s gentle arms rocking him to sleep, and Minseok singing to soothe him during thunderstorms. His father standing out in the hallway, staring at the framed funeral portraits of his wife and son on the telephone table, then turning to look at Baekhyun with a teary-eyed smile. Baekhyun had always been able to tell, whenever he had caught Mr. Kim that way, that he had been standing there for a long time. And then a few years later, after placing his father’s portrait in between the other two, he had been the one left standing there instead. 

"Sometimes it only hurts a little,” he said, when he felt like he could speak again. “And then there are still some days when I feel like I can’t breathe.” He took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out slowly. “But I’m hoping it will hurt less one day. With time.”

Chanyeol shifted a little on the bed, snuggling up closer to Baekhyun’s back. “I wonder if time really does heal all wounds,” he said quietly. “Sometimes I feel like it only reopens them again.”

“Maybe.” Baekhyun rolled over until they faced each other. He moved in close, smiling when Chanyeol went slightly cross-eyed.

"That's not fair,” Chanyeol said softly, smiling back at him.

"What isn't fair?”

Something changed in Chanyeol’s expression, and he leaned in to whisper in Baekhyun’s ear. “You can't look at me like that, and then expect me not to want to kiss you. Even fussy old lightkeepers like me have their limits.” His eyes drifted down to Baekhyun's lips. “Sometimes I can't tell if you've been sent here to reward me or to punish me, but I think it might be both." Still smiling, he gently tangled the fingers of one hand up in Baekhyun's hair, sweeping it away from his eyes. “Your hair’s getting longer now.” One rough, work-worn hand trailed over the side of Baekhyun’s face, moving down to cradle his chin.

"You're not that old, surely,” Baekhyun said.

Chanyeol raised an eyebrow at him, but then the smile returned. “I’ve probably been around for longer than you think." 

Baekhyun didn't know how old Chanyeol was, and had never bothered to ask. It wasn't really something that mattered to him. It was true that Chanyeol seemed to have aged somehow since he had first arrived at the island. Or maybe it was just that he hadn't really noticed it until now, when he really looked at him in the golden light of the afternoon: how the long black hair was streaked here and there with silver. The crows' feet that crinkled the corners of his eyes would deepen whenever he smiled, and his chest seemed to have sunk a little, his ribs more pronounced than Baekhyun remembered them being before. Maybe the scruff on his face aged him a little too, but one thing hadn’t changed: he was still the most beautiful person Baekhyun had ever laid eyes on.

"How old are you, then?" he whispered, tracing the edge of Chanyeol’s bottom lip with the tip of his finger, and smiling when Chanyeol kissed it. 

"I don't know. I'm unsure of the exact year I was born. Do such things matter to you?"

"No,” Baekhyun said. Chanyeol was a good person, and that was all he needed to know. “Do they matter to you?"

Chanyeol shook his head. "We're both grown men. I think we can handle ourselves accordingly." He smiled, biting into the softness of his lower lip, and whispered, “now tell me what else is on that beautiful mind of yours.”

“I’m wondering how it is that your lips are even softer than they look.” Baekhyun’s smile grew to mirror Chanyeol’s, almost without him knowing.

“Oh? Well, I believe that mystery can only be solved by many hours of experimentation.”

Baekhyun laughed and leaned in, his eyes half-closed. "May I..?"

Chanyeol answered him by leaning in the rest of the way. But that kiss, as gentle as it was, seemed to unlock something in him, flipping some kind of switch until he had Baekhyun pinned down upon the bed, kissing him with such hunger that he barely had the time to draw breath in between. Not that he minded.

“I was all alone for so long,” Chanyeol whispered between kisses. "To have someone here with me now, who wants me — who _cares_ about me... you'll never know what that means. How I've longed for it.” He pulled away, his breath warm and heavy against Baekhyun’s parted lips. “I haven’t felt this way about someone else in a very long time.”

“If being here alone made you unhappy, why didn’t you leave?” Baekhyun asked. 

“For what? To go where?” Chanyeol lay still for a moment, nuzzling Baekhyun’s neck like a puppy looking for milk. His breathing still sounded slightly ragged. “For a while after Junmyeon was gone, no one took me seriously... I was always the last on anyone's list. Supplies would come to me late. Maintenance, if it didn't affect the light, was carried out half-heartedly. If it wasn't for the fact that I needed kerosene to keep the lamp lit, do you think they wouldn't have left me hanging longer — that they wouldn't have tried to starve me out? The Board probably wouldn’t care a jot if I withered and died on this island; but they can't find any keepers willing to serve out here, and I have nowhere else to go." Chanyeol smiled thinly, but Baekhyun could see the bitterness in it. "They only keep me alive because it's in their best interests; but when all is said and done, I might as well be dead to those people. Junmyeon was the gold standard of lightkeepers, and I his lowly apprentice. And now the golden one is gone, and everyone thinks I did it.”

"Were you and Junmyeon together?” Baekhyun asked cautiously, not sure if he wanted to know the answer.

“No," Chanyeol whispered. He swallowed loudly. “I suppose my feelings towards him will always be... complicated. In the end, I guess he couldn't handle the island; in the weeks before he finally disappeared, I could tell he was starting to lose it. He was a seasoned light-keeper, but he’d only worked on coastal lightstations before, never an offshore one like Redhill. You see, it takes a special kind of person to be able to exist in a place like this. Someone who already knows intimately just what it feels like, being the last man left on earth.” 

Chanyeol reached over to touch Baekhyun’s face, searching his eyes with an expression that Baekhyun couldn’t read. “He knows that pain, and yet he stays anyway. He chooses to keep lighting that lamp, day after day, because there is always a chance, however remote, that a single lost soul may come drifting by. And he needs to be there when they do.” Closing his eyes, he pulled Baekhyun closer to him, pressing his warm lips against his forehead. "And then you came, washed up onto my lonely beach... banging down my door on a stormy night. You demanded entrance to this hard old heart, and you've done nothing but light up my life ever since."

“You know you’re beautiful, right?” Baekhyun said quietly. “Sometimes I think you have no idea.”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t like to look at myself too closely. Especially my eyes.” Chanyeol leaned in to nuzzle against Baekhyun's neck again, pressing a line of kisses down the length of it, then kissing further along his shoulder. “You, on the other hand…”

“Well, I think your eyes are lovely, just like the rest of you.” Now Baekhyun could look deeply into those wild black eyes and feel no fear, no trepidation; none of the hatred or contempt that those same eyes might have inspired in other people. There was nothing but love.

Chanyeol smiled against his lips. “Do you really think I’m beautiful..?” 

“Yes. Very.”

Chanyeol’s eyes began to close, and he pulled Baekhyun in for yet another kiss. “So are you,” he whispered. “So beautiful.” His kiss was almost more breath than lips, but Baekhyun still felt somehow breathless by the end of it.

They held each other through the afternoon, kissing softly but not talking much, and eventually Baekhyun drifted off to the rhythm of Chanyeol’s chest rising and falling in time with his own, and the soothing sound of his breathing. When he woke up again, it was dark outside, with the light from the lantern flashing at intervals through the window. Chanyeol was missing from the bed. 

Baekhyun hugged the pillow for a while, breathing in the smell of Chanyeol from the soft cotton cover. He went up to the watch-room a little later with two mugs of hot chocolate, and found Chanyeol sitting there, scribbling something down in the head keeper’s log-book. He glanced up at Baekhyun when he entered, smiled shyly and then looked away.

“Can I sit with you?” Baekhyun walked over to take the empty chair next to him, and set down the two mugs on top of the desk.

“Of course. How’d you sleep?” 

“Good. You?”

Chanyeol shrugged. “I only managed to squeeze in an hour or two. Better than a poke in the eye.”

“I feel like most things would be better than a poke in the eye,” Baekhyun said, trying to hold back a smile. He was getting used to Chanyeol’s odd little ways of phrasing things, but they still made him want to laugh occasionally.

Chanyeol picked up one of the mugs of hot chocolate and handed it to Baekhyun, then took the other for himself. “Come out on the gallery with me,” he said, getting up from his seat. “There’s something I want to show you.”

When they got outside, Chanyeol closed the door behind them and leaned against the railing. Baekhyun went to stand next to him. It was a cool night, and he was grateful for the warmth of the steaming mug in his hands.

“Come closer,” Chanyeol said, patting the metal bar of the railing next to him. “Look down at the water over there.”

Baekhyun looked down toward the ocean, and saw that a section of the shoreline was glowing bright blue-green with tiny dots of light, like stars. It was almost like a mirror of the sky. Silenced by wonder, he drew a breath and forgot to release it for a while. “What are they..?”

“They’re bioluminescent plankton. It’s a kind of chemical reaction that makes them glow,” Chanyeol said. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? And now, look up.” 

He pointed at the sky this time, and Baekhyun followed his hand. There were billions of stars, and the sheer number of them always took his breath away. Even on Ayr, he had always been able to see a great many stars; but on Redhill there was no light pollution to obscure the view, and they were even brighter and more numerous, so that the sky seemed to be dusted with them.

“There! Do you see it?” Chanyeol’s voice was hushed with excitement. With his free hand he pointed up at a shooting star, tracing its trajectory with his index finger. Within seconds, it was gone.

“Wow,” Baekhyun said, with quiet reverence. “That was… wow.” It felt redundant to just repeat himself like that, but all other words seemed to escape him.

Chanyeol laughed softly. “Hmm. It really was.” He lifted his mug to his lips, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. “You see quite a few of them out here.” He put the mug down on the floor of the gallery, and turning towards Baekhyun, relieved him of his mug as well. 

“But I’ll admit it,” he whispered, taking a step closer until their foreheads were nearly touching. “That’s not the main reason I brought you out here. I really just wanted to kiss you under the stars.”

Smiling, Baekhyun lifted himself onto his toes until their lips met in a warm, chocolatey kiss. Chanyeol responded with similar enthusiasm, kissing him deeply, wrapping Baekhyun up in his arms.

“Maybe starting this wasn't a good idea,” he said, pausing to kiss the corner of Baekhyun’s mouth.

Baekhyun kept his eyes closed. He could feel the warmth of Chanyeol’s breath against his cheek. “Why not?”

“Because once I start kissing you, I can never seem to stop.”

Baekhyun laughed, opening his eyes at last. “What a romantic you are.”

“Oh, I’m not a romantic at all. At least, not usually.” Chanyeol smiled, tracing Baekhyun’s jawline with the fingers of one hand. “But something about you makes me question myself, and everything that I am,” he whispered. “Everything I thought I was. And now, I want to devote myself to you, as I have to this light. To take care of you. To watch you shine. I want to be whatever you need me to be… your family, your friend, your love." He picked up one of Baekhyun’s hands and kissed his fingers. "Is that a strange thing to say?”

Baekhyun shook his head. Perhaps if it had come from someone else, it might have sounded strange, but coming from Chanyeol it only sounded right. "And what should I be to you, then?”

"Just... be mine.” Chanyeol trailed kisses over Baekhyun's brow, then down along the bridge of his nose, and at last pressed another soft one upon his lips. “I think that’ll be a good start.”


	7. Chapter 7

**VII.**

_Dear Taeng,_

_Sometimes I feel like this island might be possessed… like it’s going to swallow me up, body and soul. The next minute, I’ll catch myself thinking how completely absurd that is._

_There is an unimaginable force that pulls me toward the ocean. I feel the need to swim every single day — to immerse myself in it — or else I feel like I'll come unhinged. Lately it has been too cold to swim, and now I’m feeling this inexplicable loss, like I’ve left a part of me out there in the deep blue somewhere, and may never find it again. Can a soul survive without its other half? Where is my other self?_

_Have you ever felt that way before — that the air is not enough for you to breathe anymore, and so you must breathe water instead? And have you ever wanted to crawl out of your own skin and hide in someone else’s? I don't have any other way to describe this feeling._

_Do you remember when we read To Kill a Mockingbird at school? There was that part when Atticus says to Scout, ‘you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view; until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’_

_What happens if I climb in, and find that I can’t get back out again?_

_Much love,_

_Seal Boy_

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

In the days following their excursion to the reef, Chanyeol seemed like he was unwell. He shut himself up in his bedroom, hardly leaving it at all, and when Baekhyun came upstairs to leave trays of food at his door, most of it came back untouched. During this time, he covered all the night shifts in their entirety, and left Chanyeol alone to rest, only checking up on him when it was necessary. Whenever he did so, Baekhyun always found him with the covers pulled up over his head, the muffled sound of his breathing the only sign that he was still alive. When Chanyeol finally emerged from his room at the end of those few days, he looked thin and tired; but his colour was healthier, and to Baekhyun’s relief, he was smiling again.

As soon as Chanyeol’s mystery illness subsided, they fell back into their routine as if it had never been broken. Meanwhile, autumn settled in to stay. The island put on a different face in the cooler months; in the early morning, Baekhyun woke up to fog on the windows, obscuring his view of the sea. The foghorn seemed to be on more often than not, to the point where he began to get used to it, just as Chanyeol said he would. Chanyeol’s plants had long since shed all their flowers; Baekhyun dearly missed seeing him braiding blossoms into his hair, though he still occasionally twisted the front sections of it into loose plaits, pinning them at the back of his head to keep them out of his face.

They split the night shifts, carried out maintenance in the mornings, and shared a bed in the afternoons, sleeping in each other's arms with the salty breeze blowing in from the open window. Baekhyun sometimes woke up to Chanyeol lying beside him with his face partly buried in his pillow, gazing at him with one open eye; then he would go back to sleep wearing a little half-smile, or else he would move over to take Baekhyun in his arms, kissing him slowly. Sometimes he'd lay his head upon Baekhyun's chest, or Baekhyun would do the same to him, lulled to sleep by the steady thrum of his heartbeat. Chanyeol was always so warm; sometimes he felt a little _too_ warm. He slept wearing only his underwear, no matter the weather, his gangly body taking up most of the bed. He would somehow always end up throwing his limbs around Baekhyun in his sleep, as though subconsciously worried about him trying to escape.

But Baekhyun had no desire to leave. He would gladly have stayed in that bed with Chanyeol forever, if the lighthouse didn’t demand so much of their attention. He loved Chanyeol's need for touch, for closeness; no one had ever held him the way Chanyeol did, and at those times when he had to go to bed alone, he found it much harder to fall asleep. 

Now it was getting too cold outside to swim most days, but he still managed a quick dip when it wasn’t too windy. If he couldn’t swim, he would make do with walking along the beach, and he would gaze longingly out at the sea, wishing he could throw himself into it like he had during those halcyon days of the summer. Under the water, there was silence and peace. More and more often, he would come back from one of these lonely strolls and fill the bathtub, shed his clothes and climb in, whereupon he would submerge himself for as long as he could. He had no way of keeping accurate time; he could only count the seconds inside his head, until the fire in his ribcage outlasted the one in his belly, and he no longer had the presence of mind to continue. 

He told himself that next time they went out to the sea, as soon as the days were warm again, he would challenge Chanyeol to a proper re-match, and maybe this time he would win fair and square. It was good to have goals, even silly ones like winning a breath-holding competition. In the days of non-stop routine, it gave him something to work towards. It wasn’t that he didn’t value his work; their roles at the lighthouse were important, even vital. But that work never changed — the process and the outcome were almost always the same. He had once found comfort in that, but lately he thought it would be so easy to fall into a kind of madness if he wasn't careful.

 

One afternoon, when it was too cold even to go for a walk, he quickly gave up and went back to the lighthouse. Chanyeol had disappeared upstairs a while ago — to sleep, Baekhyun assumed, since it was too chilly outside to do much else. Approaching Chanyeol’s bedroom, however, he saw that the door was ajar.

Chanyeol called out to him as he walked past, sounding groggy with sleep. “Baekhyun, is that you..?” 

Baekhyun paused to stick his head through the door and smiled. “Who else would it be — a ghost? Jim wearing boots?”

“Well, you never know… this place is supposedly haunted.” With a soft chuckle, Chanyeol rolled onto his side and patted the bed next to him. “Come lie down with me, love.”

Shutting the door behind him, Baekhyun walked into the room, kicked off his boots and lay down next to Chanyeol, who immediately pulled him into his arms and kissed him on the forehead, and then on one corner of his mouth. He lay back with his head resting in one hand, and watched Baekhyun quietly with those eyes that noticed everything.

“And you’re looking at me like that because..?” Chanyeol’s stare was intense enough that Baekhyun felt like he had to say something. 

“Because you’re beautiful, and I want to kiss you senseless.” Chanyeol laughed, and then his voice quietened down to a whisper, like he was telling a secret. “But I’m not going to. Not yet.”

“Why not?” Baekhyun pushed his lips out in an exaggerated pout. He couldn't pretend he wasn't a tiny bit disappointed.

“Because I know you want it… and I have a thing for not letting you get what you want, and driving you mad in the meantime,” Chanyeol said, smiling. “But I’m willing to spoon you, if you’re interested.”

Baekhyun accepted the offer, rolling over to face the other way. He felt Chanyeol’s arms move around his waist, warm fingers caressing his tummy beneath the hem of his jumper. His skin tingled at the memory of the last time they shared a bed, of Chanyeol’s lips upon that same spot, softly kissing around his navel. “I love this part of you," he had said at the time, and when Baekhyun had asked why, his reply had been, "because this is the place from where your little life grew, when you were still a tiny astronaut attached to the mothership.” And he had kissed Baekhyun there again and again, whispering _"so precious"_ all the while.

At the recollection of this tender moment, Baekhyun closed his eyes and let out a little sigh.

Chanyeol nuzzled against the back of his neck. He was always clingy whenever they were in bed together. “What’s your favourite thing about me?” he whispered. “Physically, I mean.”

“My favourite thing about you?” Baekhyun thought about it for a moment. He rolled over to face Chanyeol again, pushing his hair away from his face to see his eyes. “Hmm. Your eyes.” 

“My eyes!” Chanyeol pouted, but it quickly turned into a smile. He took one of Baekhyun’s hands and pressed it against his stomach, tensing his muscles so that Baekhyun could feel them. “Not these?”

Baekhyun groaned, but he couldn’t help laughing anyway. “I love the abs too, obviously. But the eyes are my favourite. You have beautiful eyes.”

“What about my lips, then?” Chanyeol leaned in to kiss him at last; he parted Baekhyun’s lips with his tongue, then nibbled his bottom lip, tugging it gently with his teeth. “Don’t you love what I can do with them?” Sometimes he would pause just to breathe into Baekhyun’s mouth, but wouldn’t kiss him properly, knowing that it drove him nuts. He could be frustrating that way.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Baekhyun said, laughing into the kiss. He tried to push Chanyeol away from him, but Chanyeol only held on to him tighter.

“Not yet,” he murmured, burying his face in the crook of Baekhyun’s neck. “Just... kiss me a little longer.” His voice was so low with desire that it made Baekhyun shiver. “Hold me tight. I need you to remind me that I’m real.”

Baekhyun didn’t know what Chanyeol meant by this, but he thought it better not to ask, or they would never leave the bed. “It’ll be time to light up soon.”

Chanyeol’s shoulders slumped a little in defeat. “Can I at least tell you my favourite thing about you first..?”

“I suppose so,” Baekhyun sighed. “If you must.”

“Your bum. It’s like a lovely peach.” Chanyeol grabbed a cheeky handful of the bottom in question, laughing at the gasp he earned for it. “Sometimes I just want to bite it.”

Baekhyun laughed at that. “You’re sick,” he said.

“I’m only joking. The truth is, I can’t choose… I love everything. I have to have it all.” Chanyeol hovered over Baekhyun as he said this, his long dark hair falling down around him like a curtain. Occasionally he leaned down to kiss Baekhyun somewhere: his neck, or his ear, or the corner of his mouth. He especially had a thing for kissing Baekhyun in places he never would have thought he’d like to be kissed — the insides of his elbows, down over his legs, the small of his back. There were so many things that Baekhyun loved about him, and about being with him: his rough but gentle hands, and his soft lips, and the way he would whisper sweet things into Baekhyun’s skin when they made love, with such adoration in his voice. He would kiss Baekhyun all over, praising his body with an almost childlike sense of wonder, as though every time seeing him naked was the first time. There was always something for him to wax lyrical about, even if it was only a tiny mole, or a cute bit of pudge that he had probably already kissed and touched a hundred times before.

Baekhyun, for his part, loved Chanyeol’s strong arms, and his smooth skin, and his clean, sexy smell: fresh like the ocean air. He had a special soft spot for the freckles on Chanyeol’s shoulders, and his long legs, and his ‘wink-wonk’ — which was Chanyeol’s word for it, not his own. It always made him laugh, because he felt sure that Chanyeol was the only person on this earth who could call his dick a wink-wonk and get away with it. He was so charmingly unusual that Baekhyun sometimes had to wonder where the hell he had come from; but wherever that was, he didn’t care, because he especially loved how Chanyeol made him feel -- safe and wanted and adored, and so in love. Here on their island, they were shut away from the rest of the world, but Baekhyun never felt that isolation when they were alone together. This was their special place, somewhere just for the two of them.

“Take a polaroid, it’ll last longer,” he said dryly, noticing that Chanyeol was staring at him again. He often stared at Baekhyun unapologetically, which at first had taken some getting used to; but now, like everything else about Chanyeol, Baekhyun had grown to love it. It was a good feeling, knowing that Chanyeol found him attractive.

“I’m just marvelling at the way you were made,” Chanyeol whispered. “How gorgeous you are.” Without warning, he took Baekhyun in his arms and pulled him in close, covering his face in wet kisses. “Oh, whatever will I do? I can’t resist you..!”

“Stop!” Baekhyun squirmed and laughed in Chanyeol's embrace, but he didn't push him off. "You slobbery old thing.”

“Sorry. I’ll stop now,” Chanyeol said, but he kept kissing Baekhyun anyway, trailing soft little pecks up his neck and along his jaw. By the time he had the mercy to arrive at Baekhyun’s lips, Baekhyun wanted to kiss him so badly that he had to peel himself up from the bed, trying to meet him halfway.

"Eager, are we?” Chanyeol's grin had a lascivious edge to it, his pretty eyes twinkling like stars.

"Don't," Baekhyun whined at him. “Isn't life hard enough without you being a tease all the time?”

"It is. But I’m ready to play fair now.” Chanyeol took his hand and kissed it, pressing each finger to his lips, and then, finally, he leaned in and gave Baekhyun what he wanted.

 

Afterwards, Baekhyun fell asleep. He woke up alone in Chanyeol’s bed, and caught the flash of the rotating lantern through the curtains. He sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then got out of bed to dress himself. Walking upstairs to the top of the tower, he found Chanyeol sitting in the watch-room, writing something by lamplight, as usual.

“Oh, you’re up,” Chanyeol said, looking over at him with furrowed brows. “I didn’t want to wake you. You seemed exhausted.”

“I was. But I’m not anymore.” Baekhyun blinked a few times in an attempt to look more alert. “See? Look how awake I am.”

With a wry smile, Chanyeol patted the empty chair next to him. “Then come here and keep me company. It's going to be a long night.”

“It’s always a long night,” Baekhyun said, settling down on his seat. “Why should tonight be longer than any other?”

“I don’t know,” Chanyeol said quietly. “I just don’t have a very good feeling, that’s all.”

“About what?”

“About a few things. Mainly the weather.”

Whenever Chanyeol had a bad feeling about the weather, he often turned out to be right. He claimed this was because he’d lived on the island long enough to learn to read certain signs in the sea and the sky, but Baekhyun sometimes got the feeling that there was more to it than that; that perhaps Chanyeol had some kind of intuition by which he could pick up on these things, an ability Baekhyun himself was lacking. 

Baekhyun had noticed that he’d been acting odd over the past couple of days as well — he seemed to be on edge, like he knew something Baekhyun didn’t. The first time Baekhyun asked if he was okay, Chanyeol smiled and told him not to worry, and so he hadn’t asked again; if Chanyeol said everything was fine, then all he could do was trust him.

“It seems so calm out there, though. So quiet.” After the terrible racket of the seabird attack — every squawk and thump of which was still engraved deeply into Baekhyun’s memory — he had grown to appreciate silence in a way he never had before. He walked over to the windows and looked out. It was still just light enough to see that the water was flat, its appearance almost glassy, mirroring the new moon in the dusky sky. There were no whitecaps that he could see — barely a ripple, even. Not a whisper of wind.

“That’s what I’m worried about.” Chanyeol turned the page of the logbook to a fresh one. The pen wouldn't write, and he scribbled a few lines in the corner of the page to get it going again. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the phrase ‘the calm before the storm’. Well, it doesn’t exist for no reason.”

When Baekhyun went back to his bedroom, he tried not to think about the sense of foreboding in Chanyeol’s remark, but it kept him up almost the entire night. He drifted listlessly into the kitchen the next morning, where he found Chanyeol sitting at the table — looking glum, absently chewing on a thumbnail. As soon as he saw Baekhyun walk in, he smiled, but only with his lips. The concern did not leave his eyes.

“There’s a squall line battering the coast of the mainland,” he said, “and we’ll probably be seeing the effects of it over the next couple of days. I received a radio call earlier to warn us of the fact.”

Baekhyun pulled out the chair opposite Chanyeol and sat down. “What does that mean?”

“Hard to tell, at this stage. It can mean huge swells, for starters… often it means thunderstorms and torrential rain, as well. The one bit of light at the end of the tunnel is that they tend to pass over quickly.” Chanyeol stood up and went to the coffee pot for a refill. He offered Baekhyun a cup, but Baekhyun shook his head. 

“Anyway,” Chanyeol continued, stirring milk into his coffee, “we’ll probably need to light up during the day as well, if it's gloomy enough. I suppose we’ll have to keep our eyes on the skies and just see what happens.”

Baekhyun nodded in silence, and went to make breakfast while Chanyeol disappeared back up to the watch-room with his cup of coffee. Jim was visibly out of sorts that day, too; he seemed mopey and unsettled, and spent much of the morning curled up under the table, showing little interest in his dog biscuits. Thinking it might cheer him up, Baekhyun let the dog outside to run around for a bit — though he sort of had to force him out, at first — and then he walked along the cliffs to the little cemetery, looking down toward the beach. He could see no seals lazing around on the sand at all; not a single bird in the sky. The animals were nowhere to be seen. They clearly knew something was about to happen, he thought; the fact that they knew something he didn’t know made a feeling of unease form like an indigestible lump inside his stomach.

Sure enough, that afternoon they were hit by a savage storm, which woke Baekhyun up from his daytime nap. He came out from his room, rubbing his eyes, and nearly bumped into Chanyeol out in the stairwell. He seemed to be on some kind of mission.

"Have you seen the dog?" Like Baekhyun, he too wore the confused expression of someone who was still half asleep. “I haven’t seen him all day.”

"Not since this morning,” Baekhyun said. “Why?"

“I can’t find him anywhere. His food hasn’t been touched… that’s not like him.” Chanyeol looked blank for a moment. Realisation settled on his face first, and then panic. He turned on his heel and continued on his way down the stairs. 

Baekhyun followed after him. He could hear Chanyeol stomping frantically all through the house, calling out Jim’s name. They met again in the kitchen, where Chanyeol sailed right past him, making a beeline for the front door.

“Where are you going?” Baekhyun asked, frowning.

“He must be outside somewhere — I must have shut him out. I’m the worst person in the world.” Chanyeol seemed to be muttering these things to himself rather than to Baekhyun. He grabbed his oilskin coat from the rack by the door, throwing it on. “I need to go out and look for him,” he said. “Wherever he is right now, he’s bound to be soaked and freezing and terrified out of his mind.”

Baekhyun thought to mention that it was him who had let Jim out in the yard earlier, but it probably wasn’t the best time. Usually one of them would let him in again afterwards, but it seemed they had both forgotten. “You can’t go out in that weather… are you really sure he’s not in the house somewhere?” he said, but Chanyeol had already closed the front door behind him. Baekhyun stood there for a second or two, staring blankly at the door, unsure of what to do. Cursing himself, he went to fetch his raincoat, pulled on his gumboots and followed Chanyeol outside into the storm. 

He stepped out into a whirlwind of torrential rain and stinging regret. The rain was icy and lashed at him hard, so that it felt like a thousand tiny cuts to the face. Each drop was so big it blasted a new crater into the dirt. It was blowing a gale, which made it almost impossible to breathe, and he could barely walk in a straight line without his raincoat billowing out and threatening to carry him away. The wind roared in his ears; it picked up handfuls of gritty sand and threw them at him, making his eyes water. He wondered if he might be lifted up from the ground, and blown off the island and into the sea — for a moment, he really believed he would. He followed after Chanyeol as quickly as he could, calling out to him, the hem of his raincoat flapping about his legs as he ran, his wet hair sticking to his face.

“Chanyeol!” he cried out after the lone figure ahead, hunched over to protect himself from the weather. “Chanyeol, wait!” 

Eventually he made enough ground that he was able to reach out and grab the sleeve of Chanyeol’s coat, pulling him back. Chanyeol spun around to look at him then, and his expression almost made Baekhyun take a step backwards. 

“Why the hell did you follow me?!” His roaring rivalled that of the wind, which whipped his hair around in all directions. “Get back in the tower!” He waved his arm around to loosen Baekhyun’s grip on his sleeve, and then yanked it away. Baekhyun had never seen him so angry before, but he had no plans to give up that easily. Beneath the anger in Chanyeol’s eyes, he could see that there was fear — and that fear was for Baekhyun’s safety, and Jim’s; it wasn’t for his own. That was just the kind of person he was.

“I’m not going back.” Baekhyun stood there with his fists clenched by his sides, resolute. "I’m not leaving you out here alone.”

Chanyeol opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He looked exasperated. Small hailstones began to collect on the ground, and he dragged Baekhyun over to one of the few trees in the yard for a moment's shelter. “I’m not out here to go jumping in puddles,” he said, raising his voice above the sound of the storm. “I just need to find my dog.”

“I know — and you will. I’ll help you.” Even as his lips formed the words, Baekhyun’s mind and body rejected them. He was terrified. Every fibre of his existence wanted to shrink away; he could feel his muscles betraying him, turning him back in the direction of the lighthouse, pulling him towards warmth and light and safety. But he couldn’t leave Chanyeol alone. And Chanyeol couldn’t leave Jim alone.

Chanyeol heaved out a sigh and pushed his wet hair out of his eyes. He looked helpless. “You don't understand; until you came along, he was all I had, and he’ll be all I have when you leave. So I have to try… I couldn’t live with myself if I didn't try.”

“Okay. So we’ll both look for him, then,” Baekhyun said, as calmly as he could manage. He swallowed his fear like a bitter pill, and told himself that it was gone; and for a little while, at least, he believed it. It was enough to keep him there by Chanyeol’s side, helping him check beneath every bush, under every tree, even inside the outhouse — anywhere a frightened dog might try to hide from the storm.

Eventually they found Jim huddled beneath a shrub, quivering violently with fear and cold. Chanyeol squatted down and opened his arms, smiling with relief when the wet dog cannonballed into his chest. "Alright, buddy… alright. You're alright." He kneeled there for a while, cradling Jim against him. Baekhyun thought he was going to have to remind Chanyeol that they needed to go back inside, but then a white flash and an ear-splitting crack of thunder did the job for him. It sent them all running, scared out of their wits, back to the lighthouse.

“I’ve never been so terrified in my entire life,” Baekhyun said, when the front door was shut safely behind them. With some of the things he had seen lately — living sealskins, flocks of suicidal birds and mollusc-encrusted seal-women not the least of them — he felt he now had the authority to make that judgement. He stood with his head leaning back against the wall for a moment, recovering his breath. 

“I’m not disagreeing with you.” Chanyeol looked wan, but he managed a smile. “Go fetch me a towel, and we’ll get this poor fella warm and dry.”

 

The storm eased off for a while in the early evening. While Chanyeol went to check on the lamp, Baekhyun walked out onto the gallery, and stood there with his hands resting on the railing. He soon noticed that there was a strange sound, something entirely new to him — a kind of distant roar. He plugged his fingers in his ears and pulled them out again, but this had no effect. It almost sounded like an approaching aircraft, he thought, but he could see no evidence of one anywhere in the sky.

Then it began to sound like several approaching aircraft. 

He went back into the lantern room, just in time to catch Chanyeol climbing down the ladder from the interior of the lens. 

“Are you okay?” Chanyeol asked, frowning at the look on Baekhyun’s face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Baekhyun nodded vaguely, barely registering the comment. "Did you hear a weird sound at all, just now..?”

"Don't talk to me about weird sounds.” Chanyeol said this in a joking sort of way, although Baekhyun could tell he was at least partly serious. "My nerves can't handle any more weird sounds… or birds, for that matter. From now on, we don’t talk about weird sounds or birds in this lighthouse.”

"I'm not kidding around… I was just standing outside, and there was a strange roaring sound in the distance,” Baekhyun said.

Chanyeol walked over to the crank, and began to wind up the rotator. “Probably just the wind. Or the ocean. Shouldn’t be anything to worry about.”

"I know I haven't been here for aeons like you have," Baekhyun said flatly, "but I know what the ocean and the wind sound like. This was different. It sounded a bit like aircraft approaching, but I couldn't see any lights in the sky."

Chanyeol stopped winding the crank when he heard this, and looked at Baekhyun with a bewildered expression. Before Baekhyun had time to say anything, he stalked over to the door leading out to the gallery, and disappeared outside for a couple of seconds. He quickly came back in again, slamming the door behind him. When his eyes met Baekhyun's, they were wild, with all the whites showing around the black irises.

"What?" Baekhyun asked; at the look on Chanyeol’s face, he felt his stomach dropping. "What is it..?” He tried to get a look at what was outside the windows, but Chanyeol held up an arm to block him off. 

"Don't," he said, in a hoarse whisper. His face looked grave and ashen. "Don't look… please.”

“But — that's not fair! If something awful’s about to happen to us, then I should know what it is too.” After a moment of struggle, Baekhyun managed to shove past Chanyeol. Whatever it was, he had to see what they were up against.

“Seriously, Baekhyun… don’t,” Chanyeol warned him. “Just trust me on this. Knowing what’s out there isn’t going to help you.”

Ignoring him, Baekhyun stumbled through the glass door and out to the gallery. Now it was almost completely dark out; but with the beam from the lighthouse, he could see the water, which now seemed to be travelling in the wrong direction. It looked like it was running away from the land instead of towards it; and as it ran, it roared louder and louder, and built up height, and speed. As the beam went around the other side, the ocean disappeared into blackness again, but there was still that roaring sound. Chanyeol came outside to stand next to him, but Baekhyun was so rooted to the spot with horror that he barely noticed.

"Is that going to come back in..?” he asked; he felt dazed, and his knees were so shaky that he was sure they would collapse beneath him. He reached out for the railing to steady himself. “That giant wave…”

Chanyeol grabbed him by the shoulders and began steering him towards the door. “I told you not to look!” he said in an angry whisper, forcing Baekhyun back into the lantern room. He pulled the door closed behind them.

"What do we do?” Baekhyun searched Chanyeol’s expression for a sliver of hope, or some kind of reassurance, but he only saw his own worry reflected back at him.

Chanyeol sighed, and stood there for a moment with his head in his hands. When he spoke again, he kept his face covered, but his voice sounded calmer. “We can't do anything, Baekhyun,” he said quietly. “We just have to stay here and ride it out."

Baekhyun almost wanted to laugh when he heard this. “Are you kidding me? Because it sounds like you are.”

Uncovering his face at last, Chanyeol glanced over at him, and it suddenly struck Baekhyun just how exhausted he looked. “No," he said wearily, “why would I do that? And anyway, what do you expect? It’s not like we can just get up and leave the island.”

"Oh god,” Baekhyun whispered. He began pulling desperately at his hair. "How big do you think it will be?” He risked another glance out the window, just in time to see a wall of white spray shoot up from over the edge of the cliff down below; it came up so high that it nearly reached the height of the lantern. The wave had climbed right up the side of the island, and the sound it made was incredible; a roaring like nothing Baekhyun had ever heard in his life. It was a sound he wouldn’t even have had the capacity to imagine until the moment he heard it, whereupon it seared itself into his mind and heart. After that, he moved quickly away, and resolved to steer well clear of the windows.

Chanyeol looked like he was about to say something, but then they both heard the faint, tinny sound of someone speaking — a radio call. He ran off to answer it, and Baekhyun could hear snippets of him talking, probably to one of the neighbouring lighthouses.

“Did you see that wave come right up to the top of the island?” Baekhyun said when he returned. “Because I sure did… and now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go downstairs, crawl under my bed and wait to die. It’s been nice knowing you.”

Without giving Chanyeol a chance to reply, he sailed right past him, hurried downstairs to his bedroom and shut the door, flinging himself face-down upon his bed. A moment later, he heard the sound of the door creaking open.

“Baekhyun, now isn’t the time to freak out.” Baekhyun felt the mattress sag a little as Chanyeol sat down on the bed beside him. “It’s going to be alright,” he whispered, stroking Baekhyun’s hair. “And if it’s not, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Whatever happens, we’ll get through it together.”

Baekhyun lifted his head up from the pillow. “Do you think it’s possible for a wave to go right over the tower..?”

“I don’t know, love,” Chanyeol said quietly. He was still stroking Baekhyun’s hair. “I suppose it might be possible.”

“So what do we do then? Tell me that much, at least.”

Chanyeol shrugged. “I already told you. Nothing left to do but wait it out.”

“Wait for what? Death?” Baekhyun said flatly, even though he couldn’t hide the tremor in his voice. He buried his face in the pillow again.

“No, Mr. Optimistic... just until it all dies down. And it will, eventually.”

They both fell silent for a while, and then Baekhyun said, “how are we meant to go to the toilet if the head’s outside..?”

“That… is a very good point. I didn’t think of that.” Chanyeol got to his feet and headed towards the bedroom door. “The wind’s picked up even worse than before, so there will be no going outside at all for the time being — a gale like that could blow your face off. I’ll go put a bucket in the bathroom, it’ll have to do.”

Baekhyun was consumed with nerves for the entire time Chanyeol was gone, worried that he might never come back, even though he knew deep down that this was irrational — he was only going downstairs for a couple of minutes. When he returned, he brought Jim with him, who ran into the room and leapt up on the bed, nearly flattening Baekhyun. He was shaking, and still a little damp from being locked out in the rain earlier; he had that nose-wrinkling wet-dog stink about him, but Baekhyun didn’t mind. He lay there with his arms around Jim’s fluffy neck, burying his face in the dog’s fur. He swallowed down the urge to panic, but it kept rising up in his throat. “Me too, buddy,” he said quietly, stroking Jim’s head. “You’re really shaking, aren’t you? Imagine if we hadn’t found you earlier.” 

He caught himself thinking about Moby then, and really hoped it was okay — that wherever his seal-friend happened to be, it was somewhere safe, protected from nature’s wrath. At least it had the sea to shelter in, he thought, or perhaps one of the caves. Still, from the sound of the wind, he wouldn’t have wanted to be out there for anything. It was howling horribly, and he had never heard anything so simultaneously anguished and furious in his life.

Standing next to the bed, Chanyeol leaned down to kiss Baekhyun’s forehead. “Since we have all this time to kill, maybe we should cuddle,” he whispered. “That’ll be a nice distraction.”

“No thanks,” Baekhyun said flatly. “Jim’s good enough for me right now.”

Chanyeol pulled away, looking so crestfallen that Baekhyun immediately felt guilty. “Are you mad at me..?” he asked.

“I’m not mad at you. I’m just not really in the mood, given that we’re all probably gonna die soon.” Baekhyun knew he was being snappy and melodramatic, but at the same time, he felt he had earned the right to be.

“We don’t know that. Not yet, anyhow.”

Baekhyun merely let out a loud _humph_ in reply, and buried his face in Jim’s fur again. “Also, I didn't like the way you said Jim will be all you have when I leave,” he mumbled. “What makes you think I’m going to leave..?”

“You’ve only been signed on for one year,” Chanyeol pointed out. “What if you choose not to stay on? Anyway, I said that hours ago… why didn’t you just tell me it upset you, instead of stewing silently all this time?”

“So? Doesn’t mean I’m going to leave. Unless you _want_ to get rid of me.” Baekhyun shoved Jim off the bed, sending him hurtling into Chanyeol’s knees. “Here — cuddle Jim, then, if you want a cuddle so bad.”

“Of course I don’t want to get rid of you. Why are you getting all weird because of something I said about the dog?” Chanyeol laughed, reaching down to scratch Jim behind the ears. “I love Jim, but not in the same way I love you… I can’t believe I even have to explain myself right now. Anyway, I once caught him trying to eat his own crap, so there's really not much to envy there.”

“I’m not jealous of the bloody dog.” Baekhyun sighed and rubbed his forehead, trying to ease some of the tension. It didn’t work. “I’m just really fucking scared, that’s all. And it's making me say stupid things that I’m probably going to regret later. Provided we’re actually still alive for me to regret them.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a cuddle..?” Chanyeol bit his lip, clearly trying not to smile.

“Do I _look_ like I want a cuddle?” Baekhyun muttered savagely. A deafening crack of thunder from outside made him flinch, and Jim began to whimper — the storm had started up again.

“Well, I don't know,” Chanyeol said, looking a tiny bit wounded. “I just thought…”

Before he had a chance to finish speaking, Baekhyun rolled off the bed and threw himself at Chanyeol, flinging both arms around his neck. Chanyeol stiffened in his embrace; he stood there with an expression of surprise that might have made Baekhyun laugh under better circumstances, but he was too on edge at that moment.

Chanyeol finally relaxed a little, his hands coming to rest on either side of Baekhyun’s waist. “There we are,” he said, laughing softly. “That's better, isn't it?”

“I think I’ll take that cuddle now,” Baekhyun said in a quiet voice. “If the offer’s still on the table.” He pressed his face against Chanyeol’s chest, just below his neck, breathing him in. It worked; Chanyeol’s smell and the warmth of his body grounded him, calming him down. For a moment, everything seemed slower, quieter — at least until the next thunder crack.

“I think the bed might be a better place to cuddle, just quietly.” From the sound of Chanyeol’s voice, Baekhyun could tell he was smiling still. “I don’t think the table would hold us.”

Baekhyun tried not to roll his eyes. “Come on, then. Before I change my mind,” he said, grabbing Chanyeol’s wrist and pulling him over to the bed. They lay down on it together, with Baekhyun in front and Chanyeol behind him, holding him close. Baekhyun said nothing; he was too riddled with anxiety to speak, and the calamitous sounds coming from outside the lighthouse did nothing to help this, though the steady flash of the lantern’s light pouring in through the window every thirty seconds was a small comfort. Chanyeol was similarly quiet, but every so often he hummed to himself, and raked his fingertips up and down along Baekhyun’s arm to soothe him.

“Chanyeol,” Baekhyun said, breaking the silence at last.

He felt Chanyeol’s lips on the top of his head, whispering into his hair. “Yes, my love.”

“I know this will probably sound like a dumb question… but I want you to be honest with me.” Baekhyun swallowed hard. “Do you think we’re gonna die..?”

He half expected Chanyeol to laugh at him and tell him not to be stupid, but he didn’t. Baekhyun really wished he would.

“Honestly, I don’t think so,” Chanyeol said, after a moment’s pause. “The tower was designed to withstand extreme weather. It’s been built to sway, sort of like a willow branch.”

“Will we _feel_ it sway?” Baekhyun shuddered at the thought. He didn’t like that idea at all.

“I don’t know… you might, a little. But I think you would have felt it by now.” Chanyeol was quiet again for a while, planting a row of soft little kisses from Baekhyun’s temple down to his ear, while he lost himself in his own thoughts. “You know, the first Redhill lighthouse was actually made of wood,” he said, with a note of amusement in his voice. “It was built in the early 19th century, and was reduced to a pile of splinters during a storm just like this one. Then they rebuilt it — again, using wood, though you’d think they’d have learnt their lesson after the first time… but you’d be wrong. Within two years, it burnt down. It was third time lucky before they finally rebuilt it properly, as it is now, using sandstone quarried from the island. And it’s been standing strong ever since. I hope you’ll find that at least a tiny bit reassuring.”

“Mmm. Not really.” Baekhyun managed a bit of dry laughter. “But it was a nice story.”

“I feel very sorry for anyone or anything that’s out there right now,” Chanyeol whispered. “And I’ll admit that, even in several years here, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. But I’m sure we’ll pull through just fine.”

Baekhyun suddenly thought about Moby again, and felt a pang of sadness. He pushed the image of the sweet little whiskery face from his mind, and rolled over to face Chanyeol. “How do you know..?”

“Well… I don’t. But I prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. Life on the lights is like that, I suppose; it doesn’t matter how prepared you think you are, Mother Nature’s going to catch you unawares at some point. Only one thing is certain: whatever happens, we must rise to meet it, and keep the light burning. Which means, with or without you, I’ll need to go back upstairs soon.” Chanyeol smiled and lightly tapped the end of Baekhyun’s nose with a finger. Then he was quiet for a moment, searching Baekhyun’s eyes, his smile fading into a solemn but earnest expression. “ _‘I know not all that may be coming’,_ ” he whispered, gently moving Baekhyun’s hair away from his forehead, “ _‘but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing’_.”

Baekhyun was about to speak, but Chanyeol leaned in and hushed him with a kiss. “I know what you’re going to ask, and no, I still haven’t read Moby Dick,” he said, smiling against Baekhyun’s lips. “I just really liked that one line.”

Baekhyun laughed softly. “I like it too. It’s one of my favourites.”

They didn’t speak again for what felt like a long time. Baekhyun listened to the unholy racket outside the tower walls, and he felt a jolt run through Chanyeol’s body at a loud metallic banging sound from somewhere down below. Jim whined a little from where he lay on the floor next to the bed.

“I would really like to know what that was,” Baekhyun said, breaking the lull in their conversation, and felt a little embarrassed at the obvious quiver in his voice. There was another banging sound soon afterwards, even louder than the first. “Actually, no I wouldn’t.”

“Probably the roof of the head,” Chanyeol said grimly. “Christmas crackers, it really does sound like Armageddon out there.”

“My brother would be having the time of his life, if he were here. He loved storms; the crazier, the better,” Baekhyun said. He allowed himself some nervous laughter, which was about all he could manage. “Whenever it was storming, he used to stand out on the verandah in his gumboots to watch it, and he would be absolutely riveted, just like it was an action film or something. I was the one who hated storms; and if one came in the middle of the night, he’d sit on the edge of my bed and sing to me so I could sleep. Then when I got older, I stopped being so deathly afraid of them. But still, I’ve never liked them.” He rolled away from Chanyeol and onto his side, facing the wall, and reached out to trace the cracks in the paint with his fingers; they were like little lightning bolts all on their own. “There’s always that fear in me, deep down. I don’t think it’ll ever leave me.”

He felt a warm arm wrap around his waist, and Chanyeol moved closer to him on the bed, pressing up against his back. "Are you okay?" he whispered.

There was a strange pressure behind Baekhyun’s eyes, like he might start crying soon, and he didn't want to speak for fear of it happening. He nodded in silence.

Chanyeol shifted upwards a little, until his chin rested on top of Baekhyun's head. “What did your brother sing to you?”

“Oh, a few different songs… it was a while ago. There was this Grateful Dead song that he really loved, and he used to sing that a lot.” Baekhyun smiled at the memory. “He was such a Deadhead. I liked making fun of him because of it.”

Chanyeol laughed. “I might be a bit of a Deadhead too, believe it or not.”

“Oh yeah? And why am I not surprised?”

“Quiet, you,” Chanyeol whispered. Baekhyun could tell he was smiling, because he could feel the movement of his lips against the back of his neck. “Which song was it?” He leaned in to kiss the spot just beneath Baekhyun’s ear.

“Box of Rain,” Baekhyun said quietly. 

“I know it.” Chanyeol was silent for a moment. He snuggled against Baekhyun’s back, pulling him in closer. “Do you want me to try..?”

Baekhyun opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. He nodded, and Chanyeol put his lips to his ear and began to sing to him softly — so softly that he could only just hear it above the sounds of the storm: _a box of rain will ease the pain, and love will see you through._

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Baekhyun didn't hear the rest of the song before he drifted off to sleep. When he woke up alone in his bed, he checked the time, and saw it was a quarter to six in the morning. It was still dark outside. The lighthouse was still standing around him. He could hear the sound of the lantern turning, and nothing else. All was quiet and still.

He walked up to the lantern room and found Chanyeol there; the light was still lit, and he was standing in front of the glass with both hands on his hips, looking out at the horizon, where Baekhyun could see the first glow of the new sun beginning to peep out.

"Why didn't you wake me up?” he asked, smiling at how Chanyeol started a little at the sound of his voice.

Chanyeol turned around to look at him, returning Baekhyun’s smile. He looked especially gorgeous with the glowing sky behind him; Baekhyun still couldn’t believe how handsome he was, sometimes. “You obviously really needed the sleep, so I left you to it. Though I’m surprised at how quickly you nodded off, what with the world ending outside and all.”

"You need to sleep too, you know,” Baekhyun said. “You should have woken me up. I would have covered the second half of the shift.”

Chanyeol waved him off. “It’s fine… everything’s fine, for now. Congratulations, though — you’ve weathered your first proper storm. And what a baptism of fire that was.” Grinning, he opened his arms, and as soon as Baekhyun moved into them he enveloped him in a hug, holding him tight and noisily kissing the side of his face. “Though I’m afraid we can’t say the same for my garden. Or Jim's kennel. Or the washing line. Or the chicken coop. Or, for that matter, the head.”

Baekhyun looked up at him, wide-eyed. “The head’s gone..?”

“It is ever! It’s been absolutely annihilated.” One side of Chanyeol’s mouth curled up in amusement. “All the walls are flattened. The door’s in three pieces. All that’s left is a hole in the ground with a seat over it, and even that looks like it's about to fall in."

“Oh well... I suppose it might be a nice change, having to shit out in the open air,” Baekhyun said flatly. "Feeling the wind gently stirring your wink-wonk.”

Chanyeol laughed at that. “It’s a head with a view. And what a view it is.” He took Baekhyun by the hand, gently pulling him towards the door leading out onto the gallery. “Come, my darling. Come outside and watch the sunrise with me.”

They stood out there together, holding hands, and watched the sun come up, spreading its rays out and painting the sea gold. Slowly the sky turned from orange to lilac, and then to a soft, powdery blue with a haze of yellow along the line of the horizon.

“Do you ever wonder how deep the ocean is?” Baekhyun asked, out of the blue.

“No idea… I don’t know much about stuff like that. I just know that the depth of it was traditionally measured in fathoms,” Chanyeol replied. He continued to look out to sea, and Baekhyun followed his gaze. “I suppose that's how the word 'unfathomable' came about. Because the depth of certain things can't be measured.”

“Such as how much you like me?” Baekhyun said, teasing him, but the way Chanyeol turned to look at him with a serious expression made his smile fade a little.

“Like how much I’ve grown to love you,” Chanyeol whispered, and he held Baekhyun’s face in both hands while he kissed him, leaving him so breathless that it was some time before he was finally able to whisper _“I love you too.”_

 

Later, they went down to the yard to inspect the damage so that they could report it to the Board. The grass surrounding the lighthouse was sodden with water, bubbling and squishing beneath their boots. Everywhere was strewn with debris; sticks and stones and bits of wood — and, to Baekhyun’s discomfort, a couple of dead birds. Just as Chanyeol had described, the outhouse had been completely flattened in the storm; the corrugated sheet of iron that once served as the roof had ended up against the side of the building, and was all bent out of shape. The chicken coop had fared no better, and if Chanyeol hadn’t taken the chickens out of it and locked them up in the engine room as a precaution, it was almost certain they all would have perished. But as it was, they had all survived; Chanyeol had found them all huddled together in one corner of the engine room, beneath the pipes and valves of the silent foghorn, along with a couple of fresh eggs.

“Deary me… looks like we’ll be using the bucket for a while yet.” Despite the grimness of it all, Chanyeol seemed cheerful, and whistled a seafarer's tune while he went about the dreary business of writing his report, standing out in the yard with a notepad and scribbling something into it with a chewed stub of a pencil. "We need to take note of everything that happened — all losses, all damage, every single hairy little detail. The Board will need to know it all… although I can’t say how long it’ll take for them to send someone out here to fix it. As long as the light’s still working, that’s the main thing they’re concerned about; not whether we have a proper toilet or not.”

Baekhyun didn’t care about the outhouse. He wasn’t precious about such things anymore, and after genuinely fearing for his life for several hours, it seemed like a silly thing to get worked up about.

Now Chanyeol was looking sadly at his little happy wanderer plant, and the trellis on which it grew, which was all broken to bits on the grass. “My happy wanderer doesn't look very happy anymore, does it?” he said with a sigh. “Anyhow, let's not sweat the small stuff too much.” He turned to look at Baekhyun with a weary smile. "Tomorrow, for all we know, the whole island may sink. But until then, we’re alive, and today is another day.” 

He tucked the pencil and notepad into the breast pocket of his shirt (turquoise blue with birds of paradise on it) and gave Baekhyun a squeaky kiss on the cheek. “Alright then, now we’ve got some real work to do.”

They spent the day cleaning up as much as they could, and doing whatever odd repairs they could manage on their own. In the afternoon, when the waterlogged grass had dried out and the sun had returned to their little island, they lay out in the sunshine for a while, soaking it up, letting it warm their aching muscles.

“It’s really nice out here today,” Baekhyun said; the air was crisp, but the chill was tempered with the warmth of the sun. “Almost seems unreal, after the madness of last night.”

“It’s beautiful,” Chanyeol replied, nodding his agreement. “But I can think of things that are more beautiful. Or one person, specifically.”

Baekhyun rolled over on his side to face him, feigning interest. “Oh really? Tell me more.”

"I can't even describe the kind of beauty you have," Chanyeol whispered, pulling Baekhyun into his arms. His fingers ended up in Baekhyun's hair, combing through it gently. “It’s like you're from another world."

 _Maybe I am_ , Baekhyun thought. The grass itched the bare skin of his arm. He wriggled around a bit to scratch it. "Sometimes I think the same thing about you."

Chanyeol reached one arm up to the sky and made grabbing motions with his hand, as though attempting to pull the clouds out of it. Then he hauled Baekhyun up to lie on top of him, playfully pretending to groan beneath his weight. “And what world do you think I'm from, then?"

"I don't know.” With a happy sigh, Baekhyun rested his head on Chanyeol’s chest, listening to his heartbeat. It was beating quickly, which made him smile. “But I don't think I've ever met anyone else from there."

A sea eagle hovered above them, high up in the silver sky, floating on a warm pocket of air. Baekhyun felt a shiver run down his spine at the shrill sound of its cry. “I’m still not ready for birds,” he muttered to himself. He thought about the seal-folk again, and how some people thought they were fallen angels kicked out of heaven, who fell from the sky and landed in the sea. The seal-folk were many different things, according to many different people. Chanyeol was many things to many people too, but the people had been wrong this time; every word Baekhyun had heard uttered against him had, in his own experience, proved to be false.

He closed his eyes, sending a prayer up to the sky. _Come, sweet wind, and whisper to me what is right. I can no longer trust the mouths of men._

He opened his eyes when he felt a warm mouth pressed against the top of his head, and then he lifted himself up to meet Chanyeol’s lips with his own. He threaded his fingers through Chanyeol’s hair while they kissed, losing himself in the bliss of the moment.

_Well, maybe except for one._

"If I asked you anything, would you tell me?” he whispered; he laid his head on Chanyeol’s chest once more, closing his eyes. “Would you tell me everything there is to know about you?"

Chanyeol picked up Baekhyun’s hand and kissed it softly. "I would," he said quietly. "But something tells me you wouldn't ask.”

Chanyeol was right about that, Baekhyun thought; he wouldn't ask, because he didn't want to know. He was afraid of knowing Chanyeol completely -- afraid of proving himself wrong, most of all. It made him feel a little ashamed.

“Let me throw that back at you," Chanyeol said. "Would you tell _me_ anything I asked?”

Baekhyun thought about it for a while. “I don't know. Probably.”

Chanyeol laughed softly. “Somehow I find that answer more refreshing and truthful than anything else you might’ve said.” He was quiet for a moment. “I don't have to know every single thing about you, Baekhyun. I’m only interested in knowing whatever you feel the need to tell me. And that you love me too, of course.”

In response to this, Baekhyun moved closer and kissed him again, whispering _“of course I love you”_ into the kiss. Maybe the worst was over, or maybe it was just beginning; whatever was coming, though, he knew that he wouldn’t meet it alone.


	8. Chapter 8

**VIII.**

_Dear Taeng,_

_I know you can be landlocked, but can you be sea-locked also? Sometimes I enjoy the isolation, and then there are other times when I feel a bit trapped, like I do now._

_I know you'll just tell me I can leave anytime and come back home, but it's not that simple. I know there is something I’m looking for here, even if I don’t fully know what it is yet. I can’t leave until I find it._

_Much love,_

_Seal Boy_

_P.S. do you think we can ever truly know the people we love? This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately._

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

With Chanyeol’s vegetable garden destroyed by the storm, they now had to rely on the fortnightly supply delivery for all of their food. This would have been fine, Baekhyun thought, if those deliveries were always on time. On one occasion, the boat was a week overdue, and apart from a couple of eggs from Chanyeol’s hens, and what few fish they were able to catch, all they had left to eat for days on end were rice and dried beans. The beans were the main object of Baekhyun’s hatred; they had to be soaked for hours before they could be made into something edible, and even then, the term ‘edible’ could only be applied very loosely. Even Chanyeol, with his talent for cooking, seemed unable to do them justice.

"I have some good news for you,” Chanyeol piped up, when Baekhyun met him in the kitchen for breakfast one morning. “They're finally going to make the supply delivery today.”

Baekhyun’s response to this was an exaggerated groan of relief. “Thank God... if I see another bloody bean, I think I’ll go spare.” 

Chanyeol laughed and went back to scrambling eggs in a pan on the stove. “Well, you’ll be happy to know that we’ll finally have some stuff to go with the beans, at least. Other than rice, and egg.”

“Good. I hate to say it, but even Jim was starting to look appetising from certain angles,” Baekhyun said, sitting himself down at the table.

“Hey — if you eat my dog, I'll eat you." Chanyeol put a plate of hot scrambled eggs in front of Baekhyun, and laid a fork down next to it. "Anyway, the supply boat should be here sometime within the next couple of hours.”

“Do you want me to go down and receive them?” Baekhyun lifted a forkful of scrambled egg to his mouth, blowing on it to cool it down. 

“If you’d be so kind,” Chanyeol said in a sing-song voice. He seemed to be in a good mood that day, and looked slightly less under the weather than he’d been lately. Baekhyun had noticed that he seemed to be increasingly lethargic, especially in the mornings, and so he was always trying to take on more of the late-night shifts to let Chanyeol rest. But Chanyeol wouldn’t have it; his sense of duty was so rigid sometimes.

"Why don't you ever want to meet anyone that comes here?" Baekhyun asked, and Chanyeol looked over at him with raised eyebrows, but then his expression softened into a smile.

"Dear, sweet Baekhyun… it's not that I don't _want_ to meet them, as such,” he said, chuckling softly. “Rather, I’m sparing them the unthinkable horror of having to meet _me_." He gave Baekhyun a wink, picked up his coffee and plate of eggs, and went upstairs to report on the weather.

Later that morning, Baekhyun spied the supply boat in the distance from up in the lantern room, where he was busy polishing the glass prisms of the lens. He hurried all the way down the stairs to meet it, singing a little made-up song to the tune of his excitement — “today we’ll get food! FOOD FOOD FOOD.” 

By the time he got down to the beach, the supply boat was already moored to the end of the jetty. There was a man inside it, bending over to pick something up from the floor. Baekhyun could see right away that it wasn't Yunho, the guy who usually delivered their supplies; it was someone else he didn’t recognise, stocky and middle-aged, with a face like something carved out of the unforgiving Redhill cliffs.

As he neared the boat, Baekhyun held out a hand towards the man -- better let the fellow see that he was friendly, he thought. “Hi there. I’m Baekhyun, the assistant keeper,” he said. “Where's Yunho today?”

The man shrugged. He glanced at Baekhyun’s hand, but made no move to shake it. “Off sick. I’m just covering for him."

Feeling awkward, Baekhyun slowly retracted his outstretched hand. “Funny… that's exactly how I ended up here," he said jokingly, in an attempt to lighten the mood. “Well, thanks for coming out here, anyhow. We’re running really low on almost everything, so we’re very glad to see you. The head keeper’s caught up elsewhere, but he sends his regards.”

The man said nothing for a while; he just lifted up one of the supply crates off the floor of the boat, which was full of kerosene canisters, and held it up for Baekhyun to take. “Honestly, I have no idea how you do it,” he said. “Living with that creature, day after day.”

Baekhyun looked at the man with his brows furrowed in confusion. “Who? Chanyeol..?”

“I don’t know what his name is. I don’t particularly care to know, either.”

“Chanyeol isn’t a ‘creature’; he’s a person. And a very decent one, too.” Baekhyun was trying his hardest to remain civil, but it was impossible to keep the irritation out of his tone. “Which you’d know if you actually bothered to get to know him, instead of believing what everyone else says. Don’t you have any thoughts of your own?”

The man just shrugged, looking unfazed by Baekhyun’s outburst. He stepped up out of the boat and began to untie the rope tethering it to the jetty. “I’m not the only one who thinks so, you know. That many people can’t be wrong.”

“All you people want is a scapegoat,” Baekhyun said. He was starting to get worked up now. “A lonely man on a remote island who’s not around to defend himself, huh… sounds like the perfect target for your hatred and suspicion.”

“Junmyeon was a friend of mine,” the man said. Now he sounded angry too, and he stood right up close to Baekhyun, sizing him up, invading his personal space. "Now I don’t know what that monster up there did with him, and I suppose I’ll never know. But he got rid of him, one way or another.” He took another step closer, but he wasn’t much taller than Baekhyun was, and though Baekhyun was weighed down by a heavy crate of kerosene canisters, he wasn’t intimidated. “Everyone knows it; we just don’t have the evidence to prove it. But the truth will come out one day. If there’s even a shred of justice left in the world, it’ll come out.”

Still glaring at Baekhyun, the man turned his head and spat into the water. “In the meantime, have a parting gift from me.” With a sickly smile, he bent down to pick up one of the crates — the one that carried their provisions for the next two weeks. He then held the food crate out over the side of the jetty, and dropped it with a gut-wrenching _plop_ into the sea.

“Hey!” Putting the kerosene crate down, Baekhyun rushed over to the edge and watched with dismay as the food crate and its contents sank down to the ocean floor. “Why..?”

“Oops. It just slipped right out of my hands,” the man said with a smirk. “Send my regards to your head keeper.” His expression quickly turned into one of surprise when Baekhyun, with no hesitation, gave him a hard shove in the chest, and he yelled out as he toppled backwards into the sea. There was an almighty splash that rippled the water, and sent both the supply boat and Little Fearless rocking like cradles.

“You lunatic!” The man disappeared under the water for a couple of seconds, and came back up again, coughing and spluttering. “I can’t swim..!”

“Oh, can’t you? That’s too bad. I thought everyone from Ayr could swim.” Baekhyun’s voice dripped with sarcastic pity. He squatted down on the edge of the jetty to get closer to the man’s eye level, not bothering to conceal his relish while he watched him struggle. “You want to know how I learned to swim? One day, when I was five years old, my father carried me to the end of the pier on the little beach out the back of our house, and he chucked me into the water. Then he stood there watching me, and he told me I could either keep myself afloat, or let myself sink. I learned to swim pretty damn quickly. Now might be a good time for you to learn too.” 

When he was done talking, Baekhyun picked up the kerosene crate. As he walked away, he called out, “as my own parting gift, here’s some advice: stop struggling so much, you’ll only tire yourself out.” 

He began to make his way up towards the beach, leaving the man to swim back to the boat on his own. He must have made it eventually; a little later, Baekhyun heard the sound of the motor running, and when he finally turned his head toward the sea, he saw the white boat speeding away, a trail of wash rippling the water behind it. Baekhyun watched after it for a while, and then he gave the man what Chanyeol would have called a 'sailor's farewell', which was to give him a one-finger salute and mutter a string of rude words after him as he left.

As soon as the boat was gone, he turned back toward the beach with his heart sinking into his stomach. What would he tell Chanyeol? Now they weren’t due the next supply delivery for another fortnight, and all they had left up in the lighthouse were more of the dreaded rice and dried beans. If they were lucky, they’d get a couple more eggs from Chanyeol’s hens, and there was some frozen fish in the freezer, but that wasn’t really enough to live on. There was no meat. No vegetables, fruit or bread. No powdered milk -- they’d been drinking their coffee black for the past few days, and even the coffee itself was running low.

“Well, here’s the kerosene,” he said when he got back up to the house, heaving the heavy crate onto the kitchen table. Chanyeol glanced over at him from the sink, where he was busy drying the breakfast dishes and putting them away.

“Great,” he said. “What about the food?”

Baekhyun shifted from one foot to the other. “Um. No food.”

Slowly, Chanyeol turned to look at him. “What do you mean, ‘no food’..?”

“I mean there’s no food,” Baekhyun said with a helpless shrug. “The bastard delivery guy dropped the crate with the food in it into the water. Now it’s all gone.”

Upon hearing this, Chanyeol’s brow corrugated in confusion. “I don’t understand… was it an accident? Did he trip over?”

Baekhyun shook his head. “It definitely wasn’t an accident. Not to worry, though; I pushed him right in there after it, so he got what was coming to him.”

Now Chanyeol’s expression began to darken considerably. “Why would you do that? What the hell is wrong with you..?”

Baekhyun couldn’t believe his ears. “Did you not hear me? He dropped all our food into the water — on purpose.”

“So? That doesn’t mean you can just assault the guy.”

Baekhyun let out an exasperated groan. “Who the hell cares? He deserved it. Anyway, it was just some other guy covering for Yunho, so we’ll probably never see him again.”

“It doesn’t matter if we see him again or not… if word gets out that you did this, we might have issues with our future supply deliveries — or worse, your job might be on the line. Do you not think ahead? Has working here taught you nothing at all?” Chanyeol dumped the dishcloth into the sink and stalked away from the kitchen; he paused in the doorway and turned around again, tugging at his hair in apparent frustration. “How did this even start, anyway? What did you say to him that made him suddenly want to dump all our food for the next two weeks into the sea?”

“How nice of you to assume that I’m the one who started it," Baekhyun said angrily. "If you must know, he was saying terrible things about you — all I did was come to your defence. But if this is the way you feel, maybe next time I won’t bother.”

Chanyeol sighed and leaned against the doorjamb, rubbing his forehead as if he had a headache. He looked worn out. “I don’t need you to defend me. Don’t fool yourself into believing you’ve done me a favour, because you haven’t,” he said, in a quiet but cold tone. “You don’t get to go around picking fights with the people who bring our food — they’re the ones who are keeping us alive. I would’ve thought that was common sense, but apparently I was wrong.”

Baekhyun looked at Chanyeol for a long time. “When he said those horrible things, I felt it, you know,” he said quietly, holding a hand to his chest. “It hurt me so much, right here, because he was attacking someone I love so deeply. It was almost like he was saying it about me instead of you — except it was much worse, because if it had been about me then I could have just shrugged it off, but you’re better than me, Chanyeol. I could only wish to be even half as good as you are… and yet he had the hide to speak of you that way.” Baekhyun’s voice suddenly cracked, which always happened whenever he got upset. Embarrassed, he quickly turned away so Chanyeol wouldn’t stare at him, pulling at his hair and cursing under his breath. But even though he couldn’t see Chanyeol’s gaze, he could feel it, pinning him against the kitchen wall; it made him feel short of breath, like he had to get outside for some air.

Chanyeol must have been stunned by the outburst, because he remained silent for a minute or two. “Baekhyun,” he murmured at last, but that was as far as he got before his words seemed to get stuck in his throat. Baekhyun didn’t feel like hearing him out, so he shoved past him out of the kitchen and left the lighthouse, walking down to the beach to be alone instead. 

When he got down there, he itched to go for a swim. Despite the bitter wind, he took all his clothes off and dived into the sea from the end of the jetty. The water was so cold that it winded him on impact; he swam back to the jetty and held on to one of the wooden posts for a moment, trying to recover from the shock. 

When he had adjusted somewhat to the drop in temperature, he submerged himself and swam down as far as he could go, trying to look for the lost crate. He managed to stay under for well over a minute, but the water was so turbid down there that he soon gave up on his search, and reluctantly drifted back up again. Wherever the crate had fallen, it wasn’t anywhere he’d be able to find it; no matter how good a swimmer he was, or how long he could hold his breath for, the sea had won this one. He would let her have it.

“Enjoy our provisions, Mother Ocean... I suppose at least someone will,” he muttered to himself as he emerged from the water, and plopped down on the sand to dry off. He remembered he had read somewhere that certain cephalopods had the capacity to unscrew the lids of jars and bottles, and then he imagined an octopus trying to get into a jar of jam or peanut butter that had fallen out from the supply crate. It was a funny thought, and it made him feel a little better.

He sat there for a while longer, naked and wet and shivering; he wasn’t ready yet to go and face Chanyeol, but soon it got so cold that it forced him back into his clothes and sent him dragging his feet back to the lighthouse. When he pushed the front door open, the house was quiet. He eventually found Chanyeol in the living room, curled up on one end of the sofa with a book in his lap. Jim lay near his feet on the floor, dozing.

Chanyeol’s eyes flickered up at Baekhyun for a split second, but he turned the page of his book and said nothing.

“Hey,” Baekhyun said.

“Hey,” Chanyeol replied coolly.

Baekhyun hesitated for a moment before he spoke. “I just came to say I’m sorry about what I did to the supply man. It was stupid and irresponsible, and I let my temper get the better of me. Whether he deserved it or not, I really shouldn’t have done it.”

Chanyeol’s eyebrows lifted a fraction, but he remained silent.

“Look, I’m sorry... I really am,” Baekhyun said, with a little sigh of exasperation. “I don’t know what else you want me to say. If you’ll stop hating me, I’ll gladly go down to the beach every single morning until the next delivery comes in, and I’ll catch whatever fish I can. I’ll do _all_ the cooking, even though I’m shit at it. I’ll do whatever you want, if it means you’ll talk to me again.”

Chanyeol still didn’t say anything, but Baekhyun could see from the growing softness in his expression that he was beginning to thaw a little. 

“I don’t have any real excuse for how I acted,” he continued. “But it’s more than just the fact that he insulted the person I love most in the world. The whole thing triggered something inside me, like I was back at school all over again. When the other kids liked to remind me constantly that I didn’t have ‘real’ parents… that I was left behind. That I was found among animals, like some kind of freak. I didn’t get here the way everyone else did, the way I was supposed to — and now look at me. The only family I ever had is gone. My home is no longer a home. There’s nowhere I belong anymore. I guess that’s why I’ve ended up here.”

Finally, Chanyeol sighed and put the book down on the sofa next to him. He looked up at Baekhyun, gnawing his bottom lip while he considered his response. “You’ll always have a home here, Baekhyun,” he said at last, in a quiet voice. “Whether you _feel_ like this place is your home or not… well, that’s up to you. But Redhill is your home. It’s where you belong, and where you are loved.”

Baekhyun suddenly lost the ability to speak, so he just stood there and nodded in silence.

“And it was very unfair of me to assume that you were the instigator,” Chanyeol added, “although I still think you acted irresponsibly by pushing him into the water. But then, I don’t doubt for one second that he deserved it.” He smiled. “And thank you. For defending me.”

He got up from the sofa then, walked over to Baekhyun and took his face in both hands, tilting his head upwards. He looked into Baekhyun’s eyes for a long moment, with so much love in his gaze, and then he leaned down and kissed him softly on the lips.

Baekhyun smiled into the kiss. “I take it that I’m forgiven, then?”

“Of course… there’s nothing to forgive,” Chanyeol whispered, moving his lips across to Baekhyun’s ear. “Will you come with me upstairs? There’s something really important that I need to talk to you about.”

Baekhyun was taken aback by this -- Chanyeol looked sombre all of a sudden, and he found it worrying -- but he nodded his agreement. Chanyeol took him by the hand, and they walked up to his bedroom together without speaking. 

As soon as Chanyeol had closed the door behind them, Baekhyun blurted out, “please don’t send me back to Ayr -- I won’t do anything like that ever again, I promise.”

Chanyeol looked perplexed. “What are you talking about..?”

“Are you going to fire me for pushing the supply man into the water?” Baekhyun asked, mirroring his confused expression. 

Upon hearing this, Chanyeol let out a honking great laugh. “No! Whatever gave you that idea?”

“You said you needed to talk to me about something important, and then your face went all serious. What was I supposed to think..?”

“Well, I’m not going to fire you,” Chanyeol said flatly. “I don’t even have the authority to fire you; that’s the Board’s prerogative. So there’s that.”

Baekhyun felt relief gradually flooding through him. “Oh. Okay.”

Smiling a little in that wry way he always did, Chanyeol led him over to the bed to sit down. “The thing I want to talk to you about… actually, I would understand if it made you want to leave,” he said. “That’s not to say I want you to go, at all; I would hate to let you go. Unless going away from here is something _you_ want to do, in which case I would never try to stop you. I only want what’s best for you.”

“Of course I don’t want to go,” Baekhyun said. “I just begged you not to send me away, didn’t I?”

“Alright. I’m glad you feel that way.” Chanyeol held both of Baekhyun’s hands in his own, rubbing them gently. “Now, are you going to let me talk, or do I need to hold a hand over your mouth so I can finish?” There was the wry smile again.

“Okay, I’ll shut up. Sorry,” Baekhyun replied. As soon as he said this, Chanyeol suddenly pushed him down onto the bed, kissing him, and it was all he could do to swallow down a little groan of surprise and longing.

“If I bare my tortured soul to you right now,” Chanyeol whispered into Baekhyun’s mouth, “do you think you’d still love me afterwards..?”

“Well, that depends.” Baekhyun was already so breathless he could barely reply. “Are you going to admit to murder while you try to seduce me?”

Chanyeol laughed again — it was a weird-sounding laugh, slightly higher than usual. It made him sound nervous. “Oh no, this isn’t murder... I’m afraid it’s worse than that.”

Baekhyun pushed Chanyeol off him for a moment, holding him away at arm’s length. “Before you begin, tell me something first, and be honest with me.” He closed his eyes and let out a long exhale, preparing himself for the answer. “Did you really have no part in Junmyeon’s disappearance?”

“No,” Chanyeol said quietly, “I didn’t, and that’s the truth. And if I _had_ done away with him, then I might have been partly vindicated in doing so. But I promise you I had no hand in it.”

Baekhyun looked up at him for a long time, searching his face for any signs of dishonesty, but he found none. “If you say so, then I believe you. I just wanted to be sure.”

“My confession has nothing to do with anything I might have done to Junmyeon,” Chanyeol said. “If anything, it’s more about what Junmyeon did to me.”

Baekhyun’s brow furrowed. “Oh.”

Chanyeol lay down next to him, where he took both of Baekhyun’s hands and held them in his own again, tracing over each knuckle with his fingertips. His eyes remained downcast. “When we were first getting to know each other, you never held anything back about yourself. And I regret not being more open with my own story. But I felt like I couldn’t open up to you completely because… I don’t really know why. Maybe because I was scared. I didn’t trust you, and I feel so bad about it now. So I want to make things right, because I love you. I can’t hide away from you anymore.”

“Why were you scared?” Baekhyun asked quietly.

“That you either wouldn’t believe what I had to tell you, or that I would send you running by doing so. I liked you too much to let you do that. Also, I needed you to stay here, for my own reasons. But I suppose I’ll go into that later.” Chanyeol took a deep breath and let it out slowly, shakily; now it was clear just how nervous he was, and Baekhyun was suddenly overwhelmed with love and concern for him. “It’s just that I haven’t felt this way about someone in a very long time. Not only do I love you, Baekhyun, but I trust you with my life; so I want you to know everything about me. Not only who I am, but what I am.”

“Just tell me already. You’re making me anxious with all your fidgeting,” Baekhyun said, with an uneasy chuckle.

Chanyeol nodded. “Okay,” he whispered. He sighed again and paused for a moment before he continued. “Before Junmyeon went missing, he… well, he took something from me. Something that meant the world to me, which I haven’t been able to recover.” He was still avoiding Baekhyun’s gaze. “I remember you mentioning that your father used to tell you stories about the seal-folk. What exactly did he tell you?”

The skin of Baekhyun’s entire body prickled alternately with heat and cold, but he didn’t know why. “He did tell us a few selkie stories, when my brother and I were younger. But I could never decide if I believed them or not.”

Chanyeol was silent for so long that the tension made Baekhyun feel faintly nauseous. “I am one of them,” he said at last, in a quiet voice. “One of the seal people. The thing that Junmyeon took from me was my sealskin. Without it, I couldn’t return to the sea, and so I’ve been trapped here on land, as a human, ever since.”

Baekhyun opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He felt — and, for all he knew, probably looked — like a suffocating fish.

Chanyeol smiled at him. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything,” he said gently, but then his smile faded. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I didn’t know _how_ to tell you, or if you would even believe me, and I was so afraid of being hurt again. I thought it would be better to just keep quiet; but the more I got to know you — and the more I fell for you — the more I felt like I was lying, to you and to myself. So I’m telling you now.”

Baekhyun just nodded, still unable to speak. Guilt and dread, bitter like bile, began to rise in his throat, but he swallowed them back down. “What did Junmyeon do with the skin?” he asked, when he could finally string a few words together.

Chanyeol shrugged. “I don’t know. He stole it when I came out from the sea; while I was resting on the beach, here on the island. I’m not sure what your father used to tell you about us, but seal-folk can shed their skins and come out of the water twice a year, on the summer and winter solstices, and then we are called back to the sea the next day. But if our skins are taken from us, as Junmyeon did to me, then we become stranded until we can get them back. So there I was, sitting on the beach on midsummer’s night; and Junmyeon took my skin from the place where I’d hidden it in the sand. I suppose he must have been watching me secretly when I came ashore, and so he had seen where I buried it. When I realised he had taken it, I pleaded with him to give it back to me, but he said he would only comply if I came up to the lighthouse with him. I had no choice but to do what I was told, since I couldn’t go back to the sea without it. There was nowhere else for me to go; so, naked and blindly trusting, I followed him. Of course, he had no intention of giving it back... but I held onto the hope that he might change his mind, perhaps out of the goodness of his heart.”

Chanyeol leaned his head back against the pillow, closing his eyes; he looked peaceful, and Baekhyun rolled over onto his side, watching him in silence. 

“At first, I think he didn’t really know what to do with me. Every night, he would shut me up inside this room while he went upstairs to tend to the light. When I had finally convinced him that I wasn’t going to run off — I couldn’t really go anywhere, after all — he let me go freely around the house. After a while, he allowed me to go outside as well.” Chanyeol paused, looking thoughtful. “When I think about it, he wasn’t a very big man; I probably could have taken him down quite easily, if I really wanted to. But he had threatened to destroy my skin if I didn’t behave, and I was so afraid that he might really do it that I didn’t dare step out of line.”

“Did you ever try looking for the skin?” Baekhyun asked. He realised by asking more questions he was only stalling, distracting Chanyeol and himself from the truth. But it was all he could do.

Chanyeol nodded. “Of course I did. I looked wherever I could -- whenever I could. I scoured every room for it the very second his back was turned. But I had no luck.” He closed his eyes again as he reminisced; Baekhyun could see in his expression how much pain it caused him to recount those memories. “That first year of my imprisonment was the most excruciating; in those days, I heard the sea calling out to me constantly. It was relentless, like a crying child, and gave me the same amount of grief. I became more and more desperate. Whenever I had a moment alone, I was rummaging through every drawer, picking the locks of every cupboard or chest. I dug holes all through the yard, and blamed Jim for it.” He chuckled softly at the thought, but then his expression grew solemn again. “But it didn’t matter how hard I searched. I found nothing; and eventually I began to wonder if he had perhaps hidden the skin somewhere else. Somewhere far away from the island.”

“But why would he take it from you?” Baekhyun asked, though he thought he already knew. He had heard enough stories to know people's reasons for doing the things they did, but often the reasons themselves still puzzled him. He couldn't even explain himself, sometimes -- why he had tried to put on the skin that day, which he now realised had probably been Chanyeol’s skin all along. And why couldn’t he tell Chanyeol about it now? Each time he tried to open his mouth, the words wouldn’t come out; but he couldn’t swallow them, either. They stayed right where they were, jabbing away at him, like a fishbone lodged in the back of his throat.

“Because he wanted a seal-person for himself, I guess,” Chanyeol said. “I can’t say I was of any use to him, other than as a sort of companion. There was no real benefit in keeping me trapped here like he did. Sometimes I think he did it just because he could.”

“Did he ever mistreat you?” Baekhyun asked quietly.

“He never harmed me. At least, not physically. Perhaps he did psychologically.” Chanyeol sighed and closed his eyes. “Junmyeon was the reason I could never leave this place; but maybe it’s because of him that I love it the way I do. So he gave me that much, I suppose... the ability to love my prison. Anyway, I was usually pretty stealthy in my searching, but one day he finally caught me looking for the skin, which I suppose was inevitable. I pretended I was looking for something else, but of course he saw right through me. Then he told me something that shattered me: there was no use in me looking, he said, because he had destroyed the skin. It was gone forever. And when I realised that I had stopped sensing its presence long ago, I believed him.”

Chanyeol’s eyes were shining, and for a moment Baekhyun thought he might cry, but he didn’t. “I was beyond devastated by the news, because I knew then that I could never go home; that I was probably going to die on this island. So what else could I do? I did my best with the situation I had found myself in. Though it caused me great pain at first, I tried to ignore the sea calling me home, and I made this place my home instead.”

“Maybe Junmyeon was in love with you,” Baekhyun said quietly. “In a very misguided sort of way.”

Chanyeol made a bitter little sound of derision. “Junmyeon didn’t love me. I suppose he may have been infatuated with me, and he did try to win my favour; but he never succeeded. I cooperated with him, and did my duties in the best way I could -- but I never returned his affection, if what he felt for me could be called that... I would not give him anything more than what I had to. He had taken everything from me — my life, my true home, everything I loved — and I could not reward him for that. Every atom of my being rejected the idea of loving him. Anyway, I am certain that he didn’t love me; at best, he wanted me for my perceived beauty. Then, when he saw that beauty starting to fade as I became more and more human, he began to lose interest. But still, he wouldn’t give me up. Every day, the sea would call me back into her arms, and I could not answer. And when that happened, I could not sleep. Then, one day, she stopped calling me at all, and that was even worse. It was an agony — a desertion — unlike anything I had ever felt.”

Chanyeol was still the most beautiful being Baekhyun had ever seen; if he thought his beauty had faded now, then Baekhyun had to wonder how beautiful he had been before. He reached for Chanyeol’s hand and squeezed it. “And then what happened?”

“That was around the time Junmyeon started to show signs of going mad,” Chanyeol said quietly. “Not because of my coldness towards him, although I’m sure that didn’t help. But I think it was because of the isolation of living here... being such a distance from anything and everything. He started ranting on about seeing creepy visions during the night. In particular, about being visited by what he referred to as a ‘strange woman’.”

Baekhyun’s blood went cold at the mention of the strange woman Junmyeon had seen. “Who was she..?”

Chanyeol shrugged. “From the description he gave me, it sounded like maybe it was Kopakonan paying him a visit. But Junmyeon thought I was the one to blame; that I was somehow playing tricks with his mind, or summoning spirits to haunt him, or some such thing. I wasn’t doing that, of course... I couldn’t have done that even if I’d wanted to. But he didn’t believe me, and began acting hostile towards me. So I just went about my duties, as usual, and tried to keep out of his way. Then one day, he went out in the afternoon, without saying anything to me about where he was off to. He left no clues about where he’d gone, though I’d noticed that his rod was missing, and so I assumed he had gone out fishing alone. When he didn’t return that night, I was concerned. The next day, he still hadn’t shown up, so I called up the Board and told them he was missing. Investigators came and searched the whole island, but they found nothing — he had simply disappeared. Afterwards, I took his place as the head keeper; no one was rushing in to take over from him, anyway, and I had nowhere else to go. Everything was hopeless; _I_ was hopeless. Wherever Junmyeon went, my last hope, as fragile as it was, finally died with him.”

After Chanyeol had finished speaking, he lay in silence for a long moment with his eyes closed. At first Baekhyun thought he had fallen asleep, but then without warning Chanyeol pulled him into his arms, holding him tight.

“Around this time in my life, when I was at my lowest point… whether I was conscious of it or not, I feel like my soul must have called out to you. Even though I didn’t know who you were yet. And then, one day, you came.” Chanyeol buried his nose in Baekhyun’s hair, tenderly kissing the top of his head. “After Junmyeon disappeared, and I had accepted the fact that I would never return home, I only spiralled deeper into despair. I knew I had a purpose here; that there were lives out on the water who depended on me to keep them safe. But after a while, it stopped being a reason to keep going. I didn't want to be trapped anymore, but I didn’t want to leave the lighthouse without a caretaker. So when you came along, secretly I was overjoyed. I jumped at the chance to recommend the assistant position to you, because I needed someone to take over for me. I planned to train you up as well as I could; then, when I had helped you become the best light-keeper you could be — when the Redhill lighthouse was in the most capable and loving hands I could possibly leave it in — I was going to make myself disappear as well.”

Chanyeol softly kissed the top of Baekhyun’s head once more, and then he was quiet. His body shook a little, and Baekhyun could tell that he was crying. He shut his eyes tight, trying to keep his own tears from escaping, but it was too late; he could feel them already, hot and stinging, sliding down over his cheeks.

“But there was one major flaw in my plan,” Chanyeol whispered, when he was able to speak again. “I hadn’t counted on something important happening: that you would change my mind. When everyone else had made up their own minds about me, you were the only one who dared to knock on my door; to come up and see me, and hang around long enough to decide who I was for yourself. You showed me how to feel love again... and you gave me hope, in the absence of everything hope had once meant to me. And now that you're here, I want to live. You _made_ me want to live. For you, and for me too.”

Baekhyun found he couldn’t respond. Even if he could have spoken, he wouldn’t have known what to say. How could he match what Chanyeol had told him? But Chanyeol quickly noticed his silence. 

“You haven’t said anything,” he said, and he took one of Baekhyun’s hands and kissed the palm of it, holding it against his lips. “Is it because you’re afraid of me? Or perhaps you don’t believe me.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Baekhyun whispered.

Chanyeol’s stare was so deep and unblinking that it made Baekhyun want to squirm. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. "But you don't believe me.”

"It's not that I don’t believe you. It’s just not an easy thing to digest." Baekhyun sucked in a shuddering breath. He felt too exposed, and had to cover his face with one hand. “I can’t tell if you’re screwing with me or not. Though I’m not sure why you would do that.”

“Do you want me to be?” There was a hint of humour in Chanyeol’s voice as he said this. “Would that be easier for you?”

“I don’t know. How can I know?”

“You can’t. Without my skin, I can’t prove anything to you. You can only take me at my word.”

Moving his hand away from his face, Baekhyun opened his mouth to speak, and then stopped short. He didn’t want to ask, but he had to — he had to know. “What did your sealskin look like?”

Chanyeol’s eyes widened at the question, and he suddenly looked so wistful that Baekhyun regretted asking. “Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve seen it… but it was sort of a light silvery grey, with dark spots all down the back of it. It really was beautiful.”

Baekhyun nodded, swallowing against that awful feeling of tightness in his throat — that dreaded lump that he couldn’t dislodge. He rolled onto his side, pulling Chanyeol against him with one arm around his waist. His hands roamed over the front of Chanyeol’s body, where he undid the buttons of his shirt one by one, sliding it down over his arms. “I’m sure it was,” he whispered, kissing Chanyeol’s ear, “but the skin you’re in now is very beautiful, too.” Perhaps there had been a time when the thought of loving a seal-person might have made him feel funny, but he had no reservations about it now. For the time being, at least, Chanyeol was still a man, and he was beautiful, and he stirred the same feelings and desires within Baekhyun that he always had.

Chanyeol shivered at the coldness of his hands, but he let Baekhyun touch him, leaning back against him with his head turned to the side. His skin erupted into goosebumps at Baekhyun’s touch; it was such a visceral reminder of the sealskin, of how it would bristle beneath his fingertips, that it made Baekhyun’s breath catch in his throat. If Chanyeol noticed this, then he didn’t mention it. He closed his eyes, and a deep sigh escaped his lips — whether of pleasure or resignation, Baekhyun didn’t know. 

Leaning forward, he kissed Chanyeol’s mouth, teasing it open with his tongue, then moved down the side of that long and beautiful neck, holding Chanyeol’s hair back to trail soft kisses along one shoulder. “You’re so gorgeous,” he whispered, “so perfect.” He had always loved the freckles scattered down Chanyeol’s back and across his shoulders, but he had never really wondered why they were there. He had assumed they were a product of time spent out in the sun, but now that he looked at them closely, they reminded him of the spots along the back of the sealskin. How had he not noticed the similarity before? He kissed his way down over the groove of Chanyeol’s spine, making sure not to miss a single freckle, and he would smile against Chanyeol’s skin every time another little shiver of longing travelled through his body. Tears began to prick at the corners of his eyes again, but he kept going. He wouldn’t stop until he had kissed them all.

“Are you crying?” Chanyeol reached behind him with one hand, feeling around for Baekhyun’s face. Baekhyun had no idea how he knew, but guessed that Chanyeol could hear it in his breathing. 

His reply was muffled against Chanyeol’s back, his face pressed into the space between his shoulder blades. “Maybe. A bit.”

“Oh, my love. Please don’t cry.” Chanyeol rolled over to face him. Cupping Baekhyun’s face in his hands, he wiped some of the tears away with his thumbs. He looked bright-eyed, and almost on the verge of tears again himself. “Is it because of what I told you?”

Baekhyun shook his head. He moved closer and nuzzled Chanyeol’s neck, kissing him there instead. “It’s because I love you,” he whispered. “Very much.” He thought about Chanyeol standing there before him on the jetty that day, so sweet and shy, pouring his heart out because he was afraid the world might be ending — well, maybe it was. Maybe it had been ending for some time, ever since Baekhyun had first shown up on his doorstep, asking to be let in, to get away from the storm. Being caught up in the fury of it had felt unspeakable at the time, but what he had faced since then — and what he was facing now — all made it seem like nothing more than a spell of gentle rain. A pitter-patter on a tin roof, that was all it had been. The real downpour was still to come.

“You still love me even after all that?” Chanyeol’s voice was so impossibly tender that it brought even more tears to Baekhyun’s eyes. He smiled. “I was worried you’d be disgusted.”

“Of course I love you,” Baekhyun replied. _If you only knew._ “How could I not love you?” _I need you_ , he wanted to add, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t saddle Chanyeol with such a burden: his own crippling fear of having to once again face the person he had been before they met, the person he was without Chanyeol. Someone lost and just floating aimlessly along, wherever the current took him — belonging nowhere, to no one. Because he couldn’t put it into words, it all came out as a deep sigh instead, dissolving quickly into the air. 

Chanyeol pressed his lips against Baekhyun’s forehead. “I love you too,” he whispered, “even though you have questionable taste in literature,” and Baekhyun had to laugh through his tears in spite of himself. He let Chanyeol cradle his face while he caught each tear with his mouth, and when their lips met again, he could taste his own heartache on Chanyeol’s tongue, salty and bittersweet all at once.

He spent the afternoon making love to Chanyeol, taking his time to kiss away every soft moan, every quickened breath that left the keeper’s lips. He loved the little smile that broke into Chanyeol’s look of focused pleasure when he whispered into his ear about how beautiful he was, how good he felt. How wonderful it was to hear Chanyeol’s sweet breathless chuckle when he pulled Baekhyun in for more kisses, one hand sliding through his hair to hold the back of his head, tenderly rubbing circles over it with his thumb. He guided Baekhyun’s rhythm with his other hand upon his hip, squeezing it gently to slow him down; they had been together long enough that Baekhyun knew what Chanyeol wanted by the language of his body alone, without him needing to utter a word. He knew how to turn Chanyeol on, how to make him feel good -- how to love him properly. The sea couldn’t do that; of this he was certain. But how to hold on to his heart… that was a different matter entirely. He couldn’t be sure if he would ever be enough on his own; enough to make Chanyeol want to stay.

They lay in each other’s arms for a long while afterwards, barely speaking. Baekhyun played with Chanyeol’s hair while he looked into his eyes, losing himself in the endless love within them. There was nothing to say that could not be better expressed through touching and kissing. It was one of those beautiful moments that Baekhyun knew he would dredge up later, over and over, to console himself in future times of trouble; no matter how murky the waters of recollection became, he would come to revisit this one often. And if the memory changed — if it came back to him slightly different each time, as memories tended to do — then that didn’t matter, just as long as he could keep the feeling of Chanyeol smiling against his lips, and the gentle wandering of his hands, and his warm breath on his skin. Chanyeol was silent except for one whisper of _“my sweet love”_ mouthed against Baekhyun’s temple, while one of his hands danced back and forth along the side of Baekhyun’s body, settling at last in the cradle of his hip. A soft breeze came in through the open window, billowing the curtains, bringing with it the briny smell of the sea outside; Baekhyun breathed it in as deeply as he could, knowing that if he had a scent to tie to the memory, he would probably be able to hold on to it for longer.

“What did you miss most about the ocean when you first came here?” he asked, ending the long silence. He felt close to nodding off, but wouldn’t allow himself to. Instead he traced around Chanyeol’s lips, over his cheekbones, along his jawline, memorising every lovely detail with his fingertips. 

“My friends… and the freedom of moving through the water,” Chanyeol whispered. Now his eyelids were beginning to droop a little too. “Chasing after fish.” He smiled to himself. “Being able to poop wherever I want.”

Baekhyun laughed at that. “You could do that here too, you know. If you really wanted to.”

“I could.” Chanyeol closed his eyes at last, looking blissful as Baekhyun began playing with his hair again, twirling locks of it around his fingers. “But that might be a little uncivilised of me.”

“And if you had to return to the sea tomorrow, what would you miss the most about living on land?”

“Apart from you and Jim, you mean?”

“Well… that goes without saying.”

Chanyeol leaned in until their lips were just shy of touching, breathing into Baekhyun’s mouth as he spoke. “I would miss… flowers. In fact, my entire garden, even though it’s all ruined now. I would miss making love with you, and the warmth of your body when you’re lying in my arms, and waking up to your beautiful smile after a long afternoon nap. And enjoying a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. And feeling the wind on my face at the top of the tower.” Finally he closed what little distance there was left, softly caressing Baekhyun’s lips with his own, kissing and lightly sucking first his top lip, and then the lower one. “I would miss finishing a shift at the end of a long night,” he whispered, “knowing you’ll be there waiting for me at the end of it, with your kiss… my greatest reward.”

Baekhyun felt too choked up to reply, but he did his best to hide it, losing himself in Chanyeol’s kisses. His love had grown so heavy that now he could feel it crushing the breath out of him. Chanyeol pulled back to look at him and smiled, brushing Baekhyun’s hair away from his face with one hand, and merely contemplating the depth of the love in those eyes made Baekhyun’s head start to hurt. It seemed like one of those unfathomable things Chanyeol had referred to, when they were out stargazing on the gallery that night; a depth so unfathomable that he knew he could never be pulled free from it. He could never be saved, nor did he ever want to be.

“If I had to return to the sea, I would still want to come back for your kisses,” Chanyeol said quietly. “I’d come back every day, if I could.” He smiled again. “Though you wouldn’t want to kiss an old seal, I imagine.”

Baekhyun scrunched up his nose. “Fish breath,” he said, and laughed. “Hmm. Maybe not.”

Chanyeol laughed too. “I didn’t think so. But I would come back anyway, all the time, just to see you. Even if I could only look at you from afar.” He held on to Baekhyun tightly, burying his face against his neck. “My sweetheart... I wish I was an octopus with a million arms, so I could cuddle you with all of them. Two arms isn’t enough arms.”

“An octopus only has eight arms. Anyway, I’m more than happy with your two arms. I would love you just as much with no arms at all.”

Chanyeol laughed softly. “That’s good to know, because I didn’t always have them.”

“You had no arms..?”

“Well, they were flippers before, I suppose,” Chanyeol said, and then a yawn cut him off in the middle of speaking.

“Go to sleep if you’re tired,” Baekhyun whispered, stroking his hair.

“Will you sleep too? I miss sleeping with you.” Chanyeol pouted sweetly, wrapping his arms tighter around Baekhyun’s waist, drawing him closer. “We hardly ever get to sleep at the same time.”

“I’ll try.”

“Okay.” Satisfied with this response, Chanyeol soon drifted off to sleep. Baekhyun eventually nodded off as well, although he had another dream in which Kopakonan the seal-woman came to visit him, rising up out of the water with all the fury of hell in her eyes. Around her was a circle of drowned men, bloated and greenish with decay, all holding on to each other’s hands. Upon waking, he sat bolt upright in bed, with a pounding heart and dry mouth. Chanyeol carried on snoring quietly beside him, stirring his own hair with his breath. Baekhyun lay down and watched him sleep for a while longer, until his heart calmed down again. He softly kissed Chanyeol’s forehead and the tip of his nose, and then he quietly got up from the bed.

He knew he would not be able to fall asleep again, even with Chanyeol sleeping next to him, and so he dressed and went down to the beach to clear his head. Even if it was too cold to go into the water, just the sound of the sea was a balm to him; he sat down on the sand with his knees drawn up to his chest, and leaned forward, pressing his face against them. He didn’t feel like he could cry anymore, even though a part of him desperately wanted to. 

He knew what he would have to do. But how could he give Chanyeol’s skin back to him? What if Chanyeol didn’t even want to go home anymore? He seemed happy enough here now, with his life on the island — with Baekhyun. If Baekhyun gave the skin back to him, he would only leave the second he got it back. Whether he wanted to stay or not was irrelevant; he would be compelled to return by shifting back to his true nature. And when he did, Baekhyun would probably never see him again.

But no matter how he tried to justify it, it gnawed at him. To knowingly keep Chanyeol here on the island, away from his home and everything he knew, was wrong. He knew that in his gut, in his heart. He had to go back to the cave and fetch it, that very moment, and then he would take it up to the lighthouse and give it back.

What would happen when he gave the skin back to Chanyeol, he wondered, as he trudged over the rocks towards the cave, feeling like he was walking towards his own death -- the death of his heart, at the very least. Would Chanyeol snatch it out of his hands and go running straight back to the sea? Would he turn back into a seal right there and then? Perhaps he should have kissed him goodbye one more time before he left the bedroom.

Inside the cave, it took him a little while to find what he was looking for, but there it was, at last — the mound of rocks he had built. He pulled them all aside, until he could wrestle the skin free and hold it in his hands. As always, it was warm, and came alive when he touched it. The silvery fur shone in what little light came in from outside.

To truly love Chanyeol was to let him be who he really was, Baekhyun thought. He could give the sealskin back to him right now, and then he could finally go home. He would be so happy when he found out.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t do it.

Baekhyun squatted on the cave floor for a long time, rocking a little on his heels, hugging the sealskin against his chest. Then he put it back where it came from, replacing all the rocks on top of it, one by one, until it couldn’t be seen. When this was done, he got up and walked out of the cave.


	9. Chapter 9

**IX.**

_Dear Seal Boy,_

_I haven't heard from you in a while. Should I be worried?_

_I know you must be very busy, but please write; even if it's only a couple of sentences to let me know that you're okay._

_Love always,_

_Taeng_

☆ ☆

_Dear Taeng,_

_I'm fine, really -- there's no need to worry about me. Believe me, I'm already doing enough of that for the two of us._

_Much love,_

_Seal Boy_

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

If Baekhyun thought Redhill was heaven on earth during summer, then that quickly changed with the arrival of winter. All the plants curled in on themselves, becoming brown and dry and gnarled like old hands. The once gentle wind became spiky with cold; when Baekhyun took the clothes down from the washing line, they were stiff with it, and almost seemed to stand up by themselves. The same benevolent sea that had cradled him gently in the warmer months now spurned him at the slightest touch, clawing at him with icy fingers, until he could hardly bear to even dip a toe in anymore. Most of the time, it was too cold even to sit on the beach.

Every day he woke up to windows rimed with frost; it sparkled on the grass when he walked outside, making it crunch beneath his boots. He wondered if the winter would bring snow; it never snowed on Ayr, but then Redhill seemed to have a life and a mind of its own, and he would not have been all that surprised if he had opened the front door one morning and walked out into a blizzard. 

The frigid weather was far from the beginning and end of their problems. Inch by inch, the sea had begun to creep up onto the shore, until at last there was only a sliver of sand left, like a white crescent moon against the black sky of the ocean. At first it had been too gradual for Baekhyun to notice, but now it was disappearing so fast that it scared him; even during high tide, he had never seen the water creep this far up the sand. Was the ocean rising? Surely it couldn’t be. 

But then if it wasn’t rising, that could only mean one thing: that the island was sinking, and the sea was slowly swallowing it up.

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

The weeks that followed were so bleak that it was almost biblical. Dead sea creatures began washing up on what little beach was left: fish, mostly, but there were also stingrays, dolphins, seals and little penguins — one time Baekhyun even saw a small shark amongst the dead. When it first started happening, Chanyeol went down to the beach with a shovel every morning, and tried to bury them all; but when more and more kept coming, he eventually had to accept defeat. As they began to decay, the stench covered the entire beach like a foul blanket, and soon the wind began to carry it up to the top of the island.

Now, more than ever, Baekhyun felt that the island was a living, breathing, sentient thing -- that eventually it would absorb him into itself, like a carnivorous plant ingesting a trapped insect. With the tides of washed-up dead, the place began to reek of death and despair. And the soundtrack to it all was an awful noise: a terrible, mournful wailing. Sometimes even the infernal bellowing of the foghorn, loud and obnoxious as it was, seemed like it could not drown it out.

Though he had no proof of it, Baekhyun knew instinctively that the sound was coming from the sealskin. He didn’t need to be told, it was just a feeling he had; he was as sure of it as he was that the sun would come up in the morning. But now that he knew the sealskin belonged to Chanyeol, he could barely bring himself to even think about it anymore, much less go anywhere near it. It remained where he’d left it, hidden inside that dark cave. He could hear it crying out to him at night, and the cries only seemed to get louder and more insistent. Could Chanyeol hear it too, he wondered… if he could, then surely it must be agony for him, but he showed no signs of being able to hear anything. It seemed that the burden was Baekhyun’s alone.

Sometimes the crying would wind down to a strange, unearthly hum, and then he would start to forget it was even there. It would just become background noise, like the sound of the rotator whirring, or the clockwork weights slowly dropping down to the bottom of the tower. It was only when Baekhyun had forgotten it completely that it would suddenly come back with a vengeance, and he could do nothing but claw at his ears, quietly begging for it to stop. He had resigned himself to suffering in silence so that Chanyeol would not wonder what was going on. If it got so bad that he couldn't bear it, he would stumble out of the room, go someplace where it was quiet and dark, and stuff a piece of cloth into his mouth to bite down on. At the end of an episode, the cloth would sometimes be bitten through, the fibres separated by the grinding of his teeth.

And now, what was real and what wasn’t? It was hard to tell if this whole thing wasn’t just a long dream that he couldn’t wake up from. After Chanyeol had confessed to him about being one of the seal people, that surreal feeling had only intensified. If someone had walked up to Baekhyun and told him he didn’t really exist — that he was just a figment of someone else’s imagination, a part of someone else’s story — then he probably would have believed them. The rest of the world, and the things happening within it, all seemed a galaxy away. All that mattered was their own little planet; their tiny island was the boundary of all awareness, and while that thought had once been reassuring, now it was suffocating.

 

In the absence of all comfort, Baekhyun took solace wherever he could, submerging himself in the bath and staying under as long as he could manage. It was the only place left where the desperate call of the sealskin seemed not to reach him. Often he soaked in the tub for more than an hour — occasionally he did it several times a day, despite initial scoldings from Chanyeol that he was churning through their water supply. The time that he could spend underwater seemed to be getting longer and longer; now the longest time he could manage was around two minutes.

Meanwhile, Chanyeol was beginning to look and act increasingly like a ghost of himself. At times, he seemed vacant and unable to focus, and would forget to do simple but crucial things, like checking the air pressure of the mantle, or winding up the rotator. Waking him up so that they could change over their shifts was becoming more difficult. Before, he had always been awake well before the start of a shift, and Baekhyun had rarely noticed him sleeping much at all. Now it seemed like sleeping was all he had the will and energy for.

 

“What’s with you lately?” Baekhyun asked one morning, while watching Chanyeol poke at his breakfast with disinterest. “You don’t seem well.”

“What do you mean? I’m perfectly fine,” Chanyeol reassured him, as he often did. But he seemed out of sorts — tired, and slower in his movements, and Baekhyun knew that something wasn’t right.

"You're not fine... I can tell. I wasn’t born yesterday,” he said. He studied Chanyeol in silence for a moment, but Chanyeol wouldn’t look at him. “I think you should take the boat over to Ayr tomorrow and see a doctor. I can stay here and hold the fort on my own for a day.”

Chanyeol sighed. He opened his mouth to speak, and then stopped. He did this a couple of times — repeatedly opening and closing his mouth — until Baekhyun got fed up and snapped at him. "What? Just spit it out! What aren't you telling me?"

Chanyeol paused for a moment longer before he spoke, in a voice so quiet Baekhyun found it hard to hear him. He looked anxious, and almost guilty. "I don’t think it’s really something a doctor can help me with.”

"So there _is_ something wrong with you."

“That’s not what I said.”

"Well then, tell me what I'm supposed to do. How am I meant to help you when you won't trust me enough to tell me what's wrong?" Baekhyun didn't mean to snap again, but it came out before he could stop himself, and immediately he regretted it. Maybe he was possessed: it was like some kind of evil slug had slimed its way into his ear while he slept, taking over his brain and personality, turning him into someone he didn’t know — someone he didn’t like. He didn't feel like himself; this wasn't him. He didn't snap at people, especially not the people he loved — he had weathered enough losses by now to know better. The very moment he began to take the people he cared about for granted was the moment they would be wrenched right out of his life, never to be seen again.

"I'm just worried about you, that's all," he said in a calmer voice, when Chanyeol looked hurt at his outburst. 

"I know you are," Chanyeol said quietly. He stiffened a little under Baekhyun’s gaze. “But I'm fine." He got up without another word, cleared his plate of mostly uneaten food, and disappeared upstairs to the watch-room.

 

As soon as Chanyeol was gone, Baekhyun sighed, and went to the bathroom and locked himself inside it. He walked over to the sink and rested his hands upon the enamel rim, staring into his own bloodshot eyes in the mirror of the medicine cabinet. Had they always been that black? Now he didn’t remember — he had believed that they were brown. And if he didn’t know this simple fact about himself, what else did he not know? His physical appearance was one of the few unquestionable things about him, when even his real date of birth had a question mark hovering over it: the one he had been given was just an arbitrary date, picked out from a handful of other arbitrary dates. The more he studied himself in the mirror, the more truly unknowable he seemed.

“What are you? Get out of me!” He hit the back of his head with an open hand. “Get _out!”_ he said again, through gritted teeth. He was clawing at his scalp so hard that when he drew his hand back, he could see blood beneath his fingernails.

After taking off his clothes, he filled up the bath and climbed into the water, letting himself be engulfed by it. Ayr had been suffocating, but now Redhill was too. Where else was there for him to go? But submerged in the bath, at least, he could pretend he was in the sea. He went under and closed his eyes. He saw, in his mind's eye, the tiny fish surrounding him — those who were curious wiggling their way over, then darting away at the slightest movement. A little blue crab crawled over the ocean floor, and began to burrow into the sand, sending clouds of it into the water. The sun shone through the surface above him, a bright six-pointed star, its light caught by every shimmering scale. When all else failed, he could still drown out the sadness of that sound with darkness and silence. 

He nearly forgot that he had to come up for air, until his lungs screamed at him and he surfaced again, gasping. He had counted to 150 before he gave up — that was two and a half minutes. As he climbed out, leaving puddles of water all over the bathroom floor, he wondered how anyone could drown themselves in a bathtub willingly. The body seemed to do anything to fight against it.

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Early in the afternoon, Baekhyun walked over to the little cemetery and stood near the edge of the cliff, as if in a trance. He felt truly alone, like he was standing at the very end of the world, and the slightest nudge from the wind would push him off. It was a long drop, he thought, craning his neck to see down below. He supposed that if he ever reached that point of true desperation, he could aim to hit the rocks, and then it would probably be instant — and hopefully painless.

Or maybe that wasn’t the way to go. Maybe it would be better to go down to the beach and just launch himself into the ocean; to lie there and be carried away by thousands of white-gloved hands, until they eventually pulled him down to a place of peace. Judging by the wind temperature, it would be deathly cold, but he wouldn't feel it for too long.

He looked down at the waves, hurling themselves in all their white, foamy fury against the sandstone walls of the island, and wondered what kind of sad and terrible things those cliffs had silently witnessed, in all the years they had stood. How many lives they had seen lost. He decided he would not be one of them. Not today.

Before he could turn away from the edge of the cliff, someone grabbed him around the waist from behind and pulled him backwards, slamming him against the hard ground. Baekhyun gasped for breath, winded by the impact. He opened his mouth to cry out, and got a mouthful of long hair. He spat it out. “Ugh. Chanyeol..?”

“What the hell do you think you're doing?!” Chanyeol's voice, usually deep and mellow, was a seething hiss. “Have you lost your fucking mind?!”

Baekhyun did not think he had lost his mind; in fact, he felt more clear-headed than he had in recent memory. His first thought as he lay pinned to the ground was how Chanyeol had managed to throw him like that, when he seemed so frail and lethargic lately. The second thought was that it was the first time he had ever heard him use the word ‘fuck’ rather than a funny substitute — 'blankety-blank' or 'fiddlesticks', or some such thing. 

“No, I— I don't know.” He tried to haul himself up, but he couldn’t. He could barely even get the words out to reply. Chanyeol was a tall man, after all, and the sheer weight of him left very little room to breathe. "Get off me, would you?”

Chanyeol’s reply was a simple and calm “no.”

Baekhyun thrashed beneath him to the best of his ability. “I said get the fuck off me!”

Chanyeol still refused to budge, and so Baekhyun turned his head and clamped his teeth down hard on one of his fingers. When Chanyeol jerked his hand away and swore in pain, Baekhyun pushed him off briefly; he began to crawl away, but he didn’t get very far before Chanyeol grabbed him by the ankles. He started dragging Baekhyun along the path leading back to the lighthouse, scraping his hands and the back of his head against the loose gravel. For a moment, Baekhyun tasted fear; his blood spiked with it, but he lay there on the ground, allowing himself to be dragged away from the cliff, too resigned and exhausted to fight against Chanyeol's hold on him.

Perhaps he’d finally incurred the Redhill keeper’s infamous wrath, he thought. Now he would get to see what all the rumours were about.

“Please,” he said, when Chanyeol finally paused to rest, panting from the exertion. “Can I go now?”

Given that they were now far enough from the cliff edge, Chanyeol gave Baekhyun a curt nod of agreement and dropped his ankles. Baekhyun could feel his gaze, heavy and dark, as he stood over him. 

“If you ever try to do what I think you were about to do, then that’s it," Chanyeol said quietly. "You're dead to me.”

“That’s kind of the point, isn't it?” Baekhyun muttered under his breath. He raised himself up a little, leaning back on his elbows. “Anyway, I wasn’t gonna jump.”

“Then why were you standing right near the edge like that?”

Baekhyun sighed and rubbed the back of his head with one hand, feeling for the spot where he’d bumped it against the ground. It was sore, but he couldn’t feel any stickiness, which meant he probably wasn’t bleeding. “I might have thought about it, for a second or two. But I quickly changed my mind, because I could never do that to you.”

Chanyeol plopped down next to him on the dirt, sitting with his legs crossed. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said, “until you tell me why you would even think of such a thing in the first place.”

Baekhyun pursed his lips. “Well, _you_ did, didn't you..?”

A look of guilt flashed across Chanyeol’s face. He sighed and said, “I just want to know so I can try to understand. Is it the isolation? Or the change in the weather… is that it? Whatever it may be, if it's that unbearable for you to live here, then I need to know. I’ll call up the Board to terminate your assignment, and then I'll send you back home to Ayr, since you're clearly medically unfit to serve here. Is that what you want?”

Baekhyun rolled onto his side on the ground, and curled up into a ball with his chin against his chest. “No,” he whispered.

Chanyeol heaved out another loud sigh, probably of exasperation, but then he placed a gentle hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder. “Baekhyun, what’s wrong? I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.” His voice was softer now. “Do you think this place doesn’t drive me nuts sometimes? Of course it does… especially lately. But if you really feel like you can’t cope with it anymore, I would much rather send you away from here than ever lose you like that. How on earth would I live with myself afterwards..?”

For a moment, Baekhyun felt like he had to just say it — just tell him. _I can't describe it. It's just an awful sound, like a million tortured souls all wailing at the same time, and there's no relief._

But how _could_ he say that — that he was probably hearing the same sounds that had once tortured Chanyeol, the ones he'd learned to turn a deaf ear to?

Baekhyun covered his face with both hands, but Chanyeol moved them away. He held them in his own, rubbing them gently to warm them up.

“You told me you couldn’t help me if I wouldn’t talk to you,” he said. “Well, it goes both ways. Why can’t we tell each other what’s troubling us?”

“I don’t know... I’m not even entirely sure I understand what it is,” Baekhyun said quietly. “Something just doesn’t feel right.”

Chanyeol nodded, but said nothing more. Helping Baekhyun to his feet, he took him gently by the hand, leading him back towards the lighthouse in silence. 

They went up to the top of the tower and out to the gallery, where Chanyeol leaned against the railing, motioning for Baekhyun to stand next to him. He was silent for a while longer, looking down toward the sea. Even from their considerable height, Baekhyun could see the bodies of all the dead sea creatures, polluting the remaining sliver of sand. Now the water was sloshing over the top of the jetty; soon it might be submerged, and then getting supplies delivered on time would be even more difficult. 

“It’s sad, isn’t it?” Chanyeol said in a quiet voice. “The sea can be such a cruel place sometimes; and yet there are those of us who yearn for it, and can never have it.”

The words _those of us_ snagged like a barb in Baekhyun’s mind. _Do you feel it too?_ he wanted to ask, but he didn’t. Of course Chanyeol felt it; that was his true home, and he had the right to feel that way. 

Baekhyun remained silent, watching Chanyeol, waiting for him to speak. He seemed pensive, but peaceful. Up close, in the early afternoon sunlight, Baekhyun could see clearly how gaunt he had become; how the dark circles under his eyes and the hollows in his cheeks cast shadows upon a face that, while still beautiful, had once been so full of light — a kind of gentle, good-natured innocence that Baekhyun had never encountered in another person. Here, far away from the rest of the world, Chanyeol had remained unspoiled by it, unmarred by the ill intentions of other people, much like the island itself. 

But the sea was inescapable. It surrounded them on all sides, both protector and captor. If Chanyeol was kept far away from the harm of the world, then he was also kept far away from the goodness of it. Was that isolation a choice, or was it all he knew? There was a darkness there; Baekhyun could see it now, and wondered how alike it could be to the darkness within himself.

“No seals lately,” he said, killing the silence when it became impossible to bear.

Chanyeol nodded. “They’ve been absent. I suppose I don’t blame them, it stinks of death down there.”

Baekhyun slumped against the cold railing. “There was a time when I really loved it here… but now I catch myself wondering sometimes if this place will be the death of me. Like it was for Junmyeon.”

“Somehow, I don’t think the island killed Junmyeon,” Chanyeol said quietly. “I think it’s more likely that Junmyeon killed Junmyeon.”

Baekhyun nodded. He remained where he was, leaning against the railing with his arms folded. Every now and then, the wind brought a faint waft of death-stink to his nostrils, and he wrinkled his nose. 

“I have a confession of my own to make,” he said at last, with a sigh so heavy that it left him feeling deflated. “I don’t really know how to tell you this, but I’m afraid that I've done something bad. And I can’t help feeling that maybe this is why everything's going to shit.”

He didn’t dare to look up and see what kind of expression Chanyeol might be wearing; whether it was one of surprise, or confusion, or anticipation. The one Baekhyun feared the most was dread — or, even worse, betrayal. God forbid he should ever inspire a look of betrayal on that lovely face. But that was exactly the kind of look he was expecting, and he knew it was the one he deserved.

“When I found the wreck of my brother’s boat that day...” he began, and then he stalled. Somewhere in the distance a gull shrieked, and it made him shudder even more than the cold air did. “It wasn’t the only thing I found.”

For a while, Chanyeol was so silent that Baekhyun wondered if he was still there. Finally he said in a quiet voice, “what else did you find?”

Baekhyun buried his face against his folded arms. His response came out muffled, but he didn’t care; he couldn’t bring himself to look up. “The storage compartment had a spotted grey skin hidden inside it. A sealskin. Just like the one you described as being yours.”

Again, Chanyeol made no response. If he was trying to lure more words out of Baekhyun’s mouth with those agonising silences, then it was working. 

“A little later, I saw a woman in a nightmare — a strange, frightening seal-woman,” Baekhyun continued. “I think it was Kopakonan. She said that if I didn’t return the skin to one of her children, I would live to regret it. But she didn’t tell me who it belonged to.”

Chanyeol drew a loud breath, as though preparing to speak. Baekhyun could hear the shudder in it. "How long have you had it for?" he asked quietly.

Finally Baekhyun looked up at him, his breath catching in his throat when he saw that Chanyeol’s eyes were beginning to fill with tears. “I’m not sure, exactly. It’s easy to lose track of time here. But it must have been months, by now.”

Chanyeol swallowed thickly, his adam's apple bobbing up and down, but he said nothing.

“I’m so sorry, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun said, his voice barely a whisper. “But I can’t give it to you. I just can’t.”

Devastation began to crumple Chanyeol’s features as he took this in. But then he nodded, and forced a pained sort of smile that was almost a grimace. “Well, I suppose I wouldn't really expect you to. Even though a part of me would’ve hoped that you might be different.”

“I know that hearing this will probably change the way you feel about me,” Baekhyun said. “But I know that as soon as you get your hands on it, you’ll go back to the sea, and then I’ll never see you again.”

“This is what I am now, Baekhyun. I don’t know how to be anything else. I _can’t_ be anything else… not even for you.” Chanyeol stopped speaking, and took a few gulping breaths to calm himself down. “I don't belong here; but I can’t go back there. Tell me, where can I go?"

"You can stay here, with me.” Baekhyun grabbed both of Chanyeol’s hands, squeezing them gently. “And I promise I’ll love you, like you deserve to be loved. I’ll take the best care of you that I possibly can.”

"But for how long? Look at me." Chanyeol looked exhausted, weakened by emotion. He closed his eyes, and a tear trailed down his face, quickly chased by another. “If you’d told me that you had it to begin with…”

“You would have taken it and left,” Baekhyun said quietly. “I know it. You know it, too.”

Chanyeol sighed, so deeply that his whole body seemed to sag, like he was deflating. “I would have told you to keep it far away from me,” he whispered. “So that I could stay with you as long as I could.”

Baekhyun reached up to tilt Chanyeol’s head downwards. Standing on his toes, he kissed the tears away as they fell, and Chanyeol let him. But where he would usually come alive beneath Baekhyun’s hands, now he felt stiff and unresponsive. To see him so passive and cold was like a slap to the face, and Baekhyun couldn’t blame him for that. He had earned it.

"I hope you’ll be able to forgive me one day, even if it takes a long time,” he said. “But you’re all I have left… and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to let you go.”

Chanyeol nodded and turned away from him, holding a hand up to his face, but it was too late to hide; Baekhyun could already see that he was blinking back more tears. He drew a wet, shaky breath, his shoulders heaving a couple of times, but he made no other sound. Instead he walked back inside the lantern room and closed the door, without waiting for Baekhyun to follow him.

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Afterwards, Chanyeol went to his room and shut himself up inside it, just as he had during that time when he fell sick for a few days. Baekhyun desperately wanted to talk to him, but he didn’t dare. He knew Chanyeol would have a lot to come to terms with, and he needed the time and space to do that. Baekhyun had a lot of thinking to do himself, but it was hard when he couldn’t go down to the beach; he had become so used to going there whenever he needed to clear his head.

In the end, he went down there anyway, covering his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his jacket to block out the stench of putrefaction. He saw that some of the dead creatures had been washed back out to sea, and the skeletons of others had already been picked clean by scavenging seabirds. With any luck, soon the beach might be clear again. 

He walked across the narrow sliver of sand towards the rocks instead, where he made his way to Dara’s Pool and sat down next to it. He realised he couldn’t recall the last time he had seen Moby; he wondered if the seal had survived the storm, and all the other things that had plagued the island lately. He hoped that it had. Seals were smart, he knew that. They were better built for survival than any inferiorly-equipped human. 

Maybe that was why Chanyeol always seemed to know what the weather was well in advance; it was probably the animal side of him that had that ability. There were so many things that made sense now that Baekhyun knew. How could he not have thought of it before? He had been so blinded by his lust for the feeling of freedom that the sea had given to him -- that Chanyeol’s sealskin had given to him. He had felt it moulding to his body that time he’d tried to put it on, and had discovered how it felt to live underwater — to exist somewhere else, in another world, another life, free of all the things that had kept him tethered for years. He had felt the sea all around him, even when it wasn't there. But it was stolen knowledge; an intimate relationship he had not earned, but instead had stumbled clumsily into. That feeling was something that belonged to Chanyeol, not him.

Baekhyun lay back against the rocky ground in defeat, his limbs all splayed out like a starfish. Before long he heard a soft grunting sound, and looked up in time to see a seal come sidling up next to him, holding a fish in its mouth. Lifting himself upright, he craned his neck to get a look at its back flippers, and saw a piece missing from one of them.

“Oh, look who it is.” He pretended to be unenthused, but secretly he was so happy to see his friend again that he could have cried. “What do you want?”

Moby looked a little put out at the cold reception. Dropping the fish from its mouth, it rolled onto its side and covered its face with one flipper, as though it were embarrassed, or upset, or both. Sometimes Baekhyun wondered if the seal really could understand everything he said, but then he figured it was probably just a good reader of tone and body language.

"Oh, don't do that... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude to you,” he said. “You're probably the closest thing to a friend I have on this island right now. Not that it’s anyone’s fault but mine.”

The apology seemed to work. As soon as Baekhyun finished speaking, the seal uncovered its face, ready to give him the time of day again.

"You know what... you're probably a lot smarter than I am," Baekhyun said. “And you seem quite pragmatic. I'm sure you don't let feelings get in the way of doing the right thing. So tell me, what should I do?”

In place of a reply, Moby pushed the dead fish towards him with its nose. A peace offering, Baekhyun thought… or perhaps a consolation prize. Even the animals pitied him now, apparently.

He shook his head. “Thanks, but no thanks. I wouldn’t feel right taking it. You caught it, it belongs to you.”

Moby bowed its head and nosed the fish a little closer to him. _Go on,_ it seemed to say. _Take it._

“Really, I’m fine. I’m not hungry.” Baekhyun glanced at his watch, and saw that it was heading towards the middle of the afternoon. “Well, it was nice bumping into you again. I guess I’ll see you around.” 

He got up and began to walk away, but a man’s voice calling out “hey!” stopped him mid-stride. Baekhyun knew that voice… he _knew_ that voice. His heart felt like it had stopped beating. Very slowly, he turned around.

“Are you gonna eat that or what?” The young man gestured at the fish on the ground. He smirked. “Talk about looking a gift fish in the mouth.” 

Baekhyun stared at him, bewildered. He knew that face, too; he would have known that face anywhere. He took a step closer, squinting his eyes in an attempt to see more clearly. “Minseok..?"

There was probably good reason for what he was seeing, Baekhyun thought — a hallucination brought on by stress, perhaps, or a chronic lack of sleep. Or maybe the mushrooms that Chanyeol put into their breakfast omelette had been the psychedelic kind. He rubbed his eyes and had another look at the man. He looked exactly like Baekhyun’s long-lost brother, except that his hair was longer and wet and stuck to his shoulders. He wore nothing but a brown sealskin wrapped around his waist.

The Minseok lookalike smiled at him: the same gummy smile that Baekhyun remembered all too well. “Hi,” he said. “Long time no see.”

This was far too much for Baekhyun to process. “Who, or what, are you?” It was impossible to keep the tremor out of his voice as he spoke. He couldn’t help taking a step backwards.

The Minseok lookalike laughed softly. “Do you really need to ask me that?” As he looked Baekhyun up and down, his smile only grew wider. “Look at you, Squish… you’re a real man now. You started shaving yet?”

“You remember me..?” Baekhyun asked, with a hand pressed against his chest.

“What do you mean? Of course I remember you.”

Slowly putting one foot in front of the other, Baekhyun walked towards his brother, afraid that the vision before him might disintegrate if he moved too suddenly. “Can I..?” He reached out to touch Minseok’s shoulder, half expecting his hand to pass right through him, but instead it landed on real flesh. Minseok’s skin was warm beneath his fingertips. There was no doubt about it; it was him.

“I can’t believe it,” he murmured. “I just can’t.”

He was so beautiful, so real, that Baekhyun couldn’t help but cry. He reached out to touch his brother’s face, feeling the roughness of his cheek, tracing along the edge of his jawline. Minseok let him do this, watching him in silence with a soft look in his eyes. Slowly Baekhyun dropped down to his knees, took Minseok’s hands in his own and turned them around, marvelling at how lifelike they were; at the thick veins, the tendons moving beneath his skin. The palms were still callused from years of sailing, and there below his thumb was the burn scar he got during a failed attempt to iron his school uniform when he was in year seven.

Baekhyun brought his brother’s hands to his mouth and kissed them hard, holding them against his face. Now his eyes were so blurry with tears that he could hardly see; they ran down his cheeks, stinging the cracks in his lips. “Is it really, really you..?” 

Minseok laughed again. "I'm real, I promise… you're not going nuts. At least not any more nuts than you already are." He looked down at Baekhyun with such fondness that it only made him want to cry even harder.

Baekhyun looked at the sealskin wrapped around Minseok’s waist. It was brown, the same colour of Moby’s fur. Sniffling, he lifted his head to look up at his brother’s face, swallowing the lump in his throat. “So you were Moby this whole time. I really can’t believe it… but at the same time, I sort of can.” 

“Yeah. Surprise.” Minseok scrunched up his nose. “I never did like that name much, though. No offence.”

Baekhyun managed a little snort of laughter, even through his tears. “How did you get like this?” he asked, wiping his eyes on his jacket sleeve. “Did you die? Do you even remember what happened?”

Minseok’s expression softened, and he reached down to tousle Baekhyun’s hair, so gently it felt as though the wind had done it. “When I went out on the water to look for mum, I got caught in a bit of bad weather, and wrecked The Day’s End on the reef,” he said quietly. “I had a lifejacket, but the water was so cold, and I was exhausted… I suppose I must have eventually lost consciousness. And then, when I woke up again, I had flippers and a tail instead of arms and legs. Took me a while to realise I wasn’t dreaming.”

“But... you’re human right now,” Baekhyun said.

"Uh-huh. I can shed my skin and come ashore, but only twice a year.”

“On the summer and winter solstices?” Baekhyun remembered this was exactly what Chanyeol had told him.

Minseok nodded. “It’s midwinter now.”

"Oh… I didn't even realise," Baekhyun murmured to himself. “It almost feels like summer ended years ago.”

“You sort of forget about time out here,” Minseok said, with a gentle smile. “It's like a different world, in a way.” 

"It is,” Baekhyun agreed. “How long will you be here for?”

“Only a day. Then the sea will call me home. And I won’t be able to refuse her when she does."

“A day,” Baekhyun echoed, feeling his heart deflate inside his chest. If Chanyeol returned to the sea, that was how often he would get to see him: two days every year.

“I’m so glad I got the chance to see you today. Especially because I really need to talk to you,” Minseok said. “Will you come for a walk with me?” 

When Baekhyun nodded his agreement, Minseok took him by the hand, and they walked together along the rocks. They were quiet for a while, but it was a comfortable silence, and Baekhyun tried to simply enjoy the feeling of holding his brother’s hand again. The last time he had done so, he had still been a kid: still young, still afraid of everything. So much had happened between now and then, but at the same time, it felt as though that time had passed in an instant. Only yesterday, that letter had been shoved under his bedroom door; only yesterday had he run down to the pier, and watched The Day’s End sailing off into oblivion.

“I have to talk to you about your friend. Well, about _our_ friend,” Minseok said, breaking the silence at last. He sat down upon a rocky ledge facing a rock pool almost as big as Dara’s Pool, and gestured for Baekhyun to sit next to him.

Baekhyun frowned. “Our friend..?”

“You know who I mean,” Minseok said, throwing a pointed look in his direction. “How many other people are there on this island?”

With a sigh, Baekhyun leaned forward, holding his head in his hands. “You’re referring to Chanyeol, I suppose,” he said. “I didn’t realise you were friends with him too.”

“Do you know what he is?” Minseok asked. When Baekhyun nodded, he said, “then you should know that he really needs his skin back. And I know that you know where to find it.”

“I know he needs it back,” Baekhyun said quietly. “That’s what I’m trying to come to terms with right now.”

“I’m not sure you understand. What I’m trying to say is that he _really_ needs it back. And the sooner you can return it to him, the better.”

“Well, why didn’t you lead him to it, then, if you two are such good friends?” Baekhyun muttered. “Why drag me into it?”

“How could I?” Minseok sighed, running a hand through his hair. “The thing is, we _used_ to be good friends, when he lived in the sea — back before he was taken. But after it happened, whenever I bumped into him on the beach, he would purposely avoid me. I could tell that he recognised me, but he wanted nothing to do with me — as soon as he saw me, he would scamper off. And I can understand why he might not want to see me anymore... I’m probably just another reminder of everything he’s had to give up. But then I sniffed out his sealskin, hidden inside the wreck of my boat, and I knew that I had to find a way to get it back to him somehow. And that was when I saw you… and I thought that maybe I could get you to help me out. Because of dad’s selkie stories, I hoped you would know what it was when you found it, and that you might be able to figure out who it belonged to.” He gave Baekhyun a wry smile and shook his head. “I can’t say it all went exactly as I planned, but I tried.”

“I guess that was where Junmyeon hid it from him all along,” Baekhyun said quietly. “Inside the wreck.”

Minseok nodded, and gently rested a hand on Baekhyun’s arm. “Chanyeol has already been stuck on this island far longer than he should,” he said. “And the longer he stays here, the more unwell he’ll become.”

Baekhyun lifted his head at last, looking Minseok in the eye. "He never told me that…”

"Maybe he didn't want to upset you. But if he's been on land for as long as I think he has, then he probably doesn't have that much time left to get back to sea.”

“But how am I going to let him go — and only see him again twice in a year? And that's only if he chooses to come back. What if he never does?”

“Could he perhaps be more than just your friend?” Minseok’s tone was not accusatory, but gently curious. “He belongs in the sea, Baekhyun," he said in a soft voice. "You can’t take that away from him. It’s who he is.”

"I can't let him go.” Baekhyun’s lower lip began to tremble, and he hated that it made him feel like a scolded child. “He… he told me he loves me."

"I'm sure he really does love you. And I’m sure you love him too. But he can't stay here."

"Why not? He's human too -- well, partly."

"He’s not human, Baek… he’s a selkie. And if he stays here too long, it’ll probably kill him.” Minseok paused to let this sink in, and it did. It felt like a lead weight inside Baekhyun’s stomach. “The ocean claims us when we're lost at sea; we don't belong to the land anymore. You're keeping him somewhere he doesn't belong.”

"But he _used_ to belong on land.” Baekhyun couldn’t explain why he was fighting so hard. It was an argument that he knew he couldn’t win, but at the same time, he had too much to lose. “How can he die if he's already dead?"

Minseok laughed and shook his head. "Just as stubborn as I remember you being. He's not dead, as such… seal-folk are reborn in the sea. If he's kept on land against his nature, then he'll waste away. He's already been doing that, very slowly, ever since the day he became trapped here. Of course, he might be used to living on land by now; he’s had plenty of time to get used to it. But it's not good for him, at all. You might think he's one of your kind, and once upon a time, he was, but now he's not. It's cruel to keep him chained up like this.”

"He never told me he was suffering,” Baekhyun said quietly. He buried his head in his hands again. “God… what have I done?”

Minseok patted him gently on the back, but Baekhyun couldn’t derive much comfort from it. "Sadly, it’s happened to many of our kind over the years. But it doesn't matter how much they love you, or you love them… if he’s kept on land too long, eventually he'll lose the will to live. We call it the selkie’s curse. His body will start to shut down, and one day he’ll probably just stop breathing in his sleep, and then he’ll die.” He snapped his fingers to make a point. “Just like that.”

“What happens when a selkie dies?” As soon as Baekhyun asked, he realised he didn’t really want to know the answer. "I'm killing him, aren’t I? I've been killing him this whole time.”

"I don't know what happens when we die," Minseok said quietly, with a sad little smile. “I've already done it once, so I don't particularly wish to find out. But you know, it's not too late… as long as he's still alive now, it's not too late. Anyway, he didn’t get in this position because of you. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

Baekhyun nodded. "I suppose so. I don't even want to think about him dying... I couldn’t bear to think about it. But if he goes home, I'll never see him again.” A tear rolled down his cheek, and he angrily wiped it away. “Either way, I'm going to lose him forever."

"It won't be forever. If he loves you, he'll come back to see you again. Just like I did.” Minseok put an arm around Baekhyun, who in turn leaned his head on his brother’s shoulder, as he used to do so many times when they were younger. “Us seal-folk are hopeless romantics like that… we can't help ourselves. We're drawn to the land because we love people, and are curious about them, and because we fondly remember the human lives we used to live. It’s just that we all have to go home again when it's our time. Chanyeol did a lot for me when I first came to the sea, and that’s why I want to help him, and you. Because I know you're better than that last guy was, and that you’ll make things right again."

"I don't know if I can do it.” Baekhyun shivered; he felt the cold wind right down to his bones, and was grateful for his brother’s arm around his shoulder. “I don't know if I can _make_ myself do it."

"Of course you can. And I'm not saying it won’t be hard, because it will.” Minseok’s voice was soft, and once again it transported Baekhyun back to a time when they were both young, when his older brother had used that same gentle tone to comfort him. “You've already had to let go of people you love; of course it will hurt to give up yet another. But some of them may find their way back to you when the time is right. If you need living proof of that, then it’s sitting right beside you.”

Baekhyun nodded, wiping his eyes with the heel of his palm. "Do you know that scary seal-woman?" he asked. "Kopakonan. The one dad used to tell us about.”

"Ah, yes… she paid you a visit, I’m guessing. What about her?"

"Does she have it in for me?”

"Not you, specifically… it's not personal. She's just trying to claim back what belongs to the sea — like a sort of marine debt collector,” Minseok said, chuckling softly. "Give back to the sea what belongs to her, and she'll bless you again. If you don't, the only thing that awaits you is more pain. I'm telling you this because you’re my little brother, and I’ll always love you. I don't want to see you get hurt. But I had to wait for the right time to do it."

"You're right,” Baekhyun said quietly. “I can't keep it from him anymore. I love him too much.”

Minseok grinned. "You love him so much you want to throw him back in the ocean, huh."

Baekhyun laughed, but it made him tear up again; this time he let them fall without wiping them away. "As much as it hurts to think about it, I should have given it back to him long ago. As soon as I found out it was his." He leaned his head against Minseok’s shoulder again. “I love him so much. I know I’ve done some things I’m not proud of, but I did them because I was afraid to lose him.”

He felt Minseok’s hand on the top of his head, patting it gently. “I know you love him. But you can love him and still do what’s best for him.”

Baekhyun nodded and wiped his eyes. He took a few deep breaths of sea air, until at last he felt calm again. He could only hope that Minseok was right: that if he did the right thing, things would turn out okay.

“Come on,” Minseok said, with a gentle hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder. “I’ll let you get back to the lighthouse now. I’m sure you have work to do.”

 

"You know, I lost dad too," Baekhyun said a little later, while they were heading back towards the beach together. "A few years after you and mum went missing."

“Oh.” Minseok stopped walking when he heard this, looking over at Baekhyun with his brow furrowed. "What happened..?"

"We went fishing together one day, and he caught the Blue Demon. But he couldn’t reel it in,” Baekhyun said quietly. “I screamed at him to just let it go, but he refused. The fish pulled him right into the water. I couldn’t save him.”

"That’s a hell of a way to go," Minseok said with a sigh. "Poor old dad. At least he was doing what he loved at the time."

“You never found mum, did you?” Baekhyun asked.

“Not yet. But I haven’t stopped looking.” Minseok looked sad, but then his face lit up suddenly. "I suppose now I can look for dad too, can't I?"

“You can,” Baekhyun said, smiling at him. “I should probably get back before it’s time to light up. But I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you again.” His smile began to fade a little. “You definitely can’t stay..?”

Minseok shook his head. “But I’ll come back to visit when I can. I promise,” he said. He took one of Baekhyun’s hands and squeezed it. “In the meantime, I just want you to think about everything I’ve told you.”

This brought Baekhyun to another problem -- it was all well and good to want to return Chanyeol’s sealskin, but that would require finding it first. “What will I do about the skin? It’s still hidden somewhere in the cave. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to find it again.”

Minseok looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well, it’s probably too late to go down there now… it’ll be dark soon, and I’m sure you have to get back to the lighthouse. Meet me tomorrow morning after sun-up, next to the cave entrance. I'll be waiting there to help you find it — as a seal, of course. But then I’ll probably be more useful to you that way."

Baekhyun nodded. He pulled his brother into a long hug, holding him so tight that it hurt. “I’ll miss you,” he whispered. “I hope we can meet again soon.”

“Don’t worry, Squish. It’s not the last you’ll see of me.” Breaking the hug with evident reluctance, Minseok looked at Baekhyun fondly, and reached over to ruffle his hair. “Maybe one day, you can bring me some more of those sardines you use for bait,” he said with a wink. “I really like those.”

Baekhyun laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. On his way back towards the beach, he turned around and saw Minseok still standing there watching him, and he waved. He smiled when he saw Minseok waving back. The next time he turned around, his brother was gone.


	10. Chapter 10

**X.**

_Dear Taeng,_

_I’ve been thinking about my brother a lot lately, and how we would talk about our dreams when we were kids. He had plans to sail around the world when he was older -- he used to go on about it all the time. He always said he was happy to do it alone, but he would also take me with him if I wanted to come; it never happened, of course, but that’s beside the point. The point is that he had a dream, a dream he really believed in, and he held on to it until the very last._

_Now I think about dreams often — not my own, since I’m not sure I have them anymore, but dreams in general, particularly dreams that are never realised. Dreams that have been cut short by circumstances, or ill fate. Have you ever wondered where they all go?_

_I have; and in my head, I picture someone standing on the shore of a lonely beach, who crouches down and gathers them all into his arms as they float in. It always makes me feel better, imagining that they are not lost._

_Much love,_

_Seal Boy_

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

While making his way back to the lighthouse, Baekhyun found Chanyeol sitting cross-legged in front of Dara’s Pool, absently tracing the fingers of one hand along the edges of it. He didn’t seem to notice Baekhyun at first, and so Baekhyun approached him quietly, sitting down on the rocky ground beside him.

“Can I sit here?” he asked, and Chanyeol finally glanced up at him. He looked even paler now, and his eyes were dark-circled, and seemed too big and black for his face. 

“You already have. Why even bother asking?” he said, but then he smiled weakly, to Baekhyun’s relief.

Baekhyun took a deep breath and let it out slowly to prepare himself. “I really need to talk to you,” he said.

“That’s good, because I really need to talk to you too.” Chanyeol turned his head away from Baekhyun for a moment, looking out towards the sea. “I’ve thought about it, and I felt betrayed because of what you told me... but the thing is, I understand how you feel. I know the pain of being the one who’s left behind, and the last thing I want is to be just another person who has to leave you. It hurts me so much, the mere thought of putting you in that position again, after everything you’ve already lost.”

Baekhyun shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said. “I know I have no right to keep you here against your nature, so I’m going to give it back to you.” He felt his throat begin to tighten a little, and swallowed against it. “Your sealskin.”

When Chanyeol turned to look at him again, his brows lifted very slightly. “Oh,” he said. It wasn’t until then that Baekhyun looked at him, _really_ looked at him — at the sallow skin, and the black hair that was beginning to silver in places, and the hollows in his cheeks. The eyes were still as wild and bright as ever, but for how long? How could he not have seen it — or had he simply chosen not to see it? 

He reached out to touch Chanyeol’s face, gently stroking his cheek. “My love,” he whispered. “What happened to you..?”

“Junmyeon happened to me.” Smiling, Chanyeol turned his head to the side, leaning into the palm of Baekhyun’s hand; he closed his eyes and kissed it softly. “And he was just a storm in a teacup compared to you.”

Baekhyun laughed, even though he felt like crying again. “I'm so sorry that I didn’t realise how badly I was hurting you. But I’m going to make it better, I promise. You’ll finally be able to go home, like you should have done a long time ago.”

Chanyeol nodded, but kept his eyes closed. “Okay,” he whispered.

“No, this time I mean it,” Baekhyun said. “The skin… it’s still hidden inside the cave where I found it. I’m going to go there tomorrow morning. I can only hope that it’s where I left it.”

Chanyeol opened his eyes, the peaceful expression on his face quickly turning into one of concern. “Are you sure that’s safe?”

Baekhyun nodded. “It’ll be fine. Let's just say I have a friend who can help me out." 

Chanyeol looked curious when Baekhyun said this, but didn't ask him to elaborate. “I knew you would change your mind, you know. Even if it took some soul-searching for you to get to that point.” He rested one of his hands on top of Baekhyun’s, and despite the cold weather, the hand was warm. “You’re a good man, Baekhyun. Even when I was upset, I never doubted that for a second.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Baekhyun laughed, but it sounded flat and joyless. Now that he was giving up the fight willingly — giving Chanyeol back his skin, his life, his true self — wasn’t he supposed to feel freer too? The laughter tasted bitter in his mouth, and he almost felt the need to spit it out. Where had he picked up such an erroneous belief, that doing the right thing would make him happier? “I think I’m probably the villain in this tale,” he said wryly. “Villains don’t get happy endings, do they?”

“Trust me, you’re definitely not the villain type. Anyway, maybe it doesn’t need to end just yet.” Chanyeol’s fingers closed around Baekhyun’s hand, squeezing it gently. “Maybe I can stay with you a little longer.”

As wonderful as this sounded, Baekhyun knew he couldn’t allow it. The thought made his heart feel like it was being crushed inside someone’s fist. “No, you can’t... I know that being here is making you sick. You should be back in the sea, with your people, as soon as possible.” The fact that he was crying again made him feel selfish, but he couldn’t help himself.

“What about you? You’re my people, too. My only land family,” Chanyeol said quietly. He cradled Baekhyun’s face in both hands, using his thumbs to wipe the tears away from his eyes. “And I don’t want you to think that leaving you will be an easy thing for me. I already know it’ll be the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do.”

“You’re my only land family too,” Baekhyun whispered.

“You belong here, and I belong out there. And we can meet halfway, from time to time, if you're willing to wait for me. But only if you really want it." Chanyeol smiled at him, then leaned in to kiss away another tear, catching it with his mouth. His lips brushed over Baekhyun’s nose, his cheeks, his chin. "Because I could never ask you to do that… if you could be happy with someone else, then I would be happy for you, too,” he said. “Even though I'd miss you so much, I’d be so happy.”

“I can wait. I have plenty here to keep me busy in the meantime.” Baekhyun frowned, lost in thought. "What’ll I tell the Board if you go home?”

“Just tell them I’m sleeping with the fishes now.” As he said this, Chanyeol laughed, and Baekhyun couldn’t help letting out a chuckle of his own. "Seriously, though, don’t tell them that."

"I’ll just tell them you had to go home, and that I’m happy to carry the torch on my own for the time being,” Baekhyun said. “I’m sure they’ll understand."

“They probably won’t even care. Have I made you regret coming here?” Chanyeol asked. Now his expression was sombre, almost sad.

Baekhyun shook his head. “I came here because I had no direction, and I wanted to have a second chance at living my life. And I got all of that, and so much more, because of you.”

"I’m glad to hear it,” Chanyeol whispered, smiling.

Still trying to blink back tears, Baekhyun said, “so you’ll come back to see me, then..?”

“Of course I'll come back. My home is here with you, too.” Chanyeol rested one hand against the side of Baekhyun’s neck, and leaned in towards him until their foreheads touched. “This is our island,” he whispered. “It will always be our island.” 

When Chanyeol’s lips finally found his, all the tension in Baekhyun’s body melted away. He could taste the salt of his own tears in each kiss, mingled with the sweetness of Chanyeol’s breath; he let Chanyeol wrap him up in his arms, kissing him deeply, whispering _“I love you”_ over and over into his mouth.

“Can I ask you something?” he said a little later, after they’d been sitting quietly for some time, their hands still joined between them. “Do you remember who you used to be before? In your earlier life.”

Chanyeol looked surprised by the question for a second or two; but then he just smiled, and turned his head to look down at the perfectly circular rock pool before him. He continued to run the fingers of his free hand along the edge of it, formed from one man’s love, worn smooth by time and the sea. 

“I do,” he said quietly, still smiling to himself. “But that, my love, is a story for another time.”

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

When the sun looked like it was about to set, they quickly returned to the lighthouse. Up in the lantern room, Chanyeol stood with Baekhyun inside the lens, and Baekhyun watched him light the lamp, as he had done so many times before.

“This might be one of the last times I’ll get to do this,” Chanyeol said afterwards, the glow of the light warming up his face. He looked vaguely misty-eyed about it, and reached over to grab Baekhyun’s hand, squeezing it gently. 

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but please stay with me tonight. Keep me company,” he whispered. He smiled and added, “keep me awake, while you’re at it.”

“Normally you’d be pestering me to go to sleep,” Baekhyun said, laughing at him. “How the tables have turned.”

They sat in the watch-room, in comfortable silence. It was much like the early days when they used to sit together: Baekhyun with his book, Chanyeol with his journal, Jim snoring at their feet. A Grateful Dead record playing in the background, at low volume. Chanyeol sang along to every song, completely murdering the lyrics, as usual. It was almost like nothing at all had changed; and yet everything had changed, at the same time.

“Do you mind keeping watch?” Chanyeol said, when it was a little past nine o’clock. He leaned his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. “I just really need to rest my eyes for a little while.”

“Of course,” Baekhyun replied. “Go ahead.”

While Chanyeol rested his eyes, Baekhyun watched over him. He looked peaceful and beautiful. Baekhyun was reminded of the first time he had seen him asleep, and thought about how soft he looked: this strange, night-dwelling creature who never seemed to sleep, who was always awake, always pottering around, always getting things done. He had seemed something other than human even back then, when Baekhyun had no inkling of his otherworldliness; smiling to himself, he stroked Chanyeol’s hair, sweeping it away from his eyes, and watched him sleep a little longer. 

It took him a while to realise — with the colour of life quickly draining from Chanyeol’s face — that he had stopped breathing.

_Not now. Please, not now._

“Chanyeol?” Baekhyun’s stomach felt like it would sink into the floor, pulling his heart along with it. “Chanyeol!” He grabbed Chanyeol’s shoulders and shook him — gently at first, and then almost violently. When this had no effect, he resorted to slapping him across the face, while at the same time internally begging his forgiveness. It worked: Chanyeol opened his eyes and doubled over, gasping for breath. He leaned back again, his eyes rolling around inside their sockets. His head lolled against the back of the chair. 

"Oh… I must have dozed off,” he murmured, while Baekhyun just stared at him in voiceless horror, with Minseok’s warning about the selkie’s curse echoing in his ears. Chanyeol was so deathly pale that it made him feel sick to look at him.

He couldn't wait until tomorrow, he realised — not for daylight, not for Minseok's help. He would have to go and find the sealskin on his own, and he would have to do it tonight.

For a moment he stood there, feeling completely helpless, pulling at his hair in desperation. "I really don't want to leave you, but... God, I have to. I _have_ to go. I’m so sorry.” He propped Chanyeol up with a couple of cushions, keeping him as upright as possible, and then twisted the volume knob on the record player to the highest setting — anything to keep him awake. A song called ‘Ripple’ was playing now, which he knew Chanyeol was especially fond of. He felt a rush of love and relief when he saw one of Chanyeol’s feet begin to tap the rhythm out on the floor; there was still a bit of life in him yet, although he didn’t know for how much longer.

"Don't fall asleep, okay?” he said gently. “Hey, you really like this song, right..?”

 _"If I knew the way, I would take you home,"_ Chanyeol murmured, mostly to himself. Was he speaking or just singing? He seemed slightly delirious, and Baekhyun's anxiety skyrocketed all over again.

"That’s right… think about home.” It was hard to keep his voice from trembling as he spoke. “Think of the light — if you fall asleep and the light accidentally goes out, all of the ships will sink. Then we'll be in big trouble with the Board.” He paused to kneel down in front of Chanyeol’s chair, holding on to both of his hands. “I need you to stay awake for the ships. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, captain. Stay awake for the ships,” Chanyeol murmured, with a wan smile and a feeble little salute.

"That's it, my love. You’re going to be fine." Baekhyun got to his feet again, and leaned in to give Chanyeol a soft kiss on the lips. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.”

Before he could leave the watch-room, Chanyeol reached out to grab his hand. “Baekhyun, wait…”

Baekhyun turned back to look at him, the furrows in his brow softening at the look on Chanyeol’s face. “Yes?” he said quietly.

“Kiss me one more time,” Chanyeol whispered, looking up at him from beneath dangerously heavy eyelids. “Before you go.”

Baekhyun nodded, fighting back tears as best he could. He couldn’t worry Chanyeol by looking upset or afraid. He took Chanyeol’s face in both hands and kissed him — long and hard, allowing himself those last few seconds to commit the taste of him to memory, breathing him in as deeply as possible. 

He was going to turn away when Chanyeol pulled him back over; this time, he hauled Baekhyun onto his lap, kissing him again, sliding his hands beneath his shirt to touch his skin. “Am I turning you on yet?” he asked, smiling against Baekhyun’s lips, “or do I need to try a bit harder?”

“You’re making this very hard for me.” Pulling away, Baekhyun rested his forehead on Chanyeol’s shoulder for a moment, catching his breath. “You really are...”

Chanyeol laughed softly. “Stay, then,” he whispered. Now his lips were on Baekhyun’s neck, nipping little love-bites into it. “Stay here, and give me some sweet lovin’ instead.” His voice was still slurred with sleepiness, and now a trace of arousal, almost like he was drunk. He began rubbing slow circles into the backs of Baekhyun’s thighs with his hands.

Baekhyun hated himself for considering the offer. “If I do, will you stay awake?”

Chanyeol’s hands moved up to Baekhyun’s bum, squeezing it gently. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll definitely go to sleep a very happy man.” 

You’ll probably die a very happy man, too, Baekhyun thought. “Please,” he whispered, leaning down to give Chanyeol one last kiss, soft and lingering. “I really need to go away for a little while. And if you promise to stay awake, I’ll give you some sweet lovin’ when I get back. As much sweet lovin’ as you want.” He desperately wanted another kiss, and yet another after that; he wanted to give Chanyeol as many kisses as he could, but there was no time. And tearing himself away — feeling his body grow cold at the loss of Chanyeol’s warmth, his touch — was unbearable. But he knew there would come a much worse kind of pain if he didn’t act quickly.

It was too difficult to run down the stairs, so he had to settle for a fast jog — he’d learned this the hard way far too many times, always tripping over his feet and slamming into the curved stone walls. As soon as he cleared the stairs, he bolted outside to the engine room to turn on the foghorn. He wondered if he could get in trouble for such a thing — turning on the foghorn when there was no fog — but it wasn’t really the right time to worry about it. The more pressing concern was how to turn the bloody thing on in the first place.

He had managed to get the foghorn started on his own a few times, but that was under less time pressure, and now his panicked mind felt all muddled. It was a monstrous old thing: a mess of pipes and flywheels and valves and pistons, all set into motion by an ancient engine, probably built sometime around the turn of the century. Baekhyun ran through the steps inside his head -- he had gone through them so many times, but it was hard to recall them in the right order now that he was scared. To help himself remember the process, he imagined that Chanyeol was there with him, talking him through it. To his surprise, it worked — he could almost hear Chanyeol’s voice as if he were standing just behind his shoulder, whispering in his ear: _"get the pony motor going to start up the diesel engine, open the valve to allow air into the holding tanks, shift the gear to start the compressor, monitor the air pressure gauge until it reads 40 PSI, pull the chain to let out the air. Flick the switch, stick your fingers in your ears and hope for the best."_

Baekhyun stood next to the machine, tapping his foot impatiently on the floor, muttering “work, you stupid old heap of shit,” under his breath. He was ready to kick the damn thing, but eventually it did work: the first blast was so loud that it nearly blew him right across the engine room. And yet he could have cried with relief — he had never been so happy to hear that fucking awful, gut-liquefying sound. He stood there and counted to twenty, just to make sure the next one was coming, and sure enough, the horn blasted again. No one with any kind of hearing ability could sleep through that noise, Baekhyun thought. Or he hoped.

When he emerged from the engine room, he looked up at the lantern on top of the tower. He saw the beam of the lamp rotating, slicing steadily through the darkness, and he felt a little better. The hardest part was still to come, but the sight of that light always had a calming effect on him. As long as it remained on, he felt that everything would work out. It had to work out.

Upon arriving down at the beach, he saw the sea had crept up so far that there was almost no sand left at all. He sloshed through the water until he reached the rocks, and walked along them towards the cave. He only had the moon and the light of a torch to see by. There was a burning feeling in his stomach, which always worsened whenever he was gripped by anxiety — he was sure that he had never been so anxious in his life. Even the way he felt during the most violent storms seemed to pale in comparison. The water had also covered part of the rocks, and he had to be careful as he walked, worried that he might accidentally stumble right into a rock pool. To his dismay, he soon discovered that even the cave was full of water; it was only up to his ankles, but it was there, and it was freezing. 

Shivering, he waded along, feeling the icy water soaking inside his boots, shining the torch beam straight ahead of him. As the inside of the cave gradually sloped downwards, the water quickly reached the middle of his calves. He kept going, wiping away tears of anger and fear. He knew he couldn’t turn back, but he didn’t know where the sealskin was, or how he would manage to find it with all this water; just to wade through it took considerable effort, and he was tired and numb with cold. How would he be able to find the little mound of rocks beneath which the skin was buried? They were sure to have been disturbed by the water. For once he wished the skin would call out to him again, so that he might be able to find it; but save for the sloshing sounds of the water and his own laboured breathing, the cave was eerily quiet. 

He felt sick with guilt. What if it had been taken by some other creature, or washed away into the sea? What if it was gone forever?

Baekhyun started humming Box of Rain to keep himself company, but the echo of it sounded creepy, and he quickly stopped; even the oppressive silence was preferable. There was a terrible creaking, groaning sound, and when he shone the torch ahead of him, he saw that it was coming from the wreck of Minseok’s boat — the water was pushing it up against the cave wall. By now, the water level was above his knees, and that was when he realised: slowly but surely, the cave was filling up.

He froze for a moment, his heart pounding. What could he do? He could turn around and run back out again, but he couldn’t leave until he had the skin. He wouldn’t allow himself to leave. 

Holding the torch in one hand, he crouched down and began to feel around through the water. His fingers landed on rocks, sand, slimy bits of what he hoped was seaweed, something that felt like bones from a dead animal — those he dropped very quickly. But he could not find anything that felt like Chanyeol’s sealskin. 

He kept searching until the water level was noticeably higher, and he knew he would have to stop. Unsure of what to do, he shone the torch around, looking for somewhere to go for the time being. He could climb into the wreck of Minseok’s boat, but it was full of water, and he knew it would not stay afloat. There was nowhere else for him to go; he couldn’t go any further, but he couldn’t leave. 

Just when he was about to give up, his eyes landed on a small rocky shelf up on the wall of the cave — probably just large enough to perch on, if he could reach it. He waded over and threw the torch up onto the ledge before climbing up, his boots scrabbling against the damp rock. He sat there catching his breath for a minute or so, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. There was another loud creaking groan from the wreck moving up against the cave wall, sending a jolt of fright through him; then he heard the sound of something dropping into the water, and realised, with a sinking heart, that he had knocked the torch off the ledge.

He leaned over as far as he could, peering down at it in horror. The beam was still on, taunting him from under the water; maybe he could quickly drop down and try to grab it. But the torch soon went out, putting an end to this idea; and as the light died, so too did his vision go black. 

Now he had no light to see by, and he was trapped on a tiny, rocky ledge inside a cave. A cave that, as far as he could tell, was still filling with water. All he could do was sit there and wait for the water to either stop flowing in, or otherwise eventually claim him. He had never felt so alone, his only companion the knowledge that he might never see Chanyeol again. He would probably die in his sleep, without ever getting his skin back. Without knowing how much Baekhyun truly loved him. 

Burying his face in the crook of his arm, Baekhyun began to shed bitter tears. As he cried quietly, he remembered something his father said to him, from one of those tales he had told many years ago: something about how a selkie could be summoned by crying seven tears into the sea. But then, how the hell could he cry exactly seven tears? It seemed too stupid to even bother trying. Anyway, he had given the sea enough of his tears over his short lifetime; someone else could contribute, for a change.

He only had one last lifeline available to him: he called out Minseok’s name as loudly as he could, yelling until his throat felt raw. If he was lucky, maybe his brother would hear him; all those times he had called out for him in the night when he was young and terrified, Minseok had been there. He had never let Baekhyun down once, until the day the sea took him away. 

When Baekhyun’s voice began to crack and he couldn’t call out anymore, he waited. And waited. 

And waited.

At some point, overcome by fear and despair, he must have fallen asleep. When he jerked awake, it took him a while to remember where he was. All he could hear was the wind whistling through the cave, and the echoed sound of dripping water, and the groan of the wreck as it bumped against the cave wall — and, faint in the distance, the sound of the foghorn still blasting up at the lighthouse. The thing was so bloody loud it could still be heard even here, in the dank bowels of the island. He shivered; he was still damp from the waist down, but otherwise he had managed to stay mostly dry, sitting where he was beyond the water’s reach.

So he was still alive. Damp and numb with cold, but otherwise, he was fine.

He couldn’t tell what time it was. Though he couldn’t see anything at all, he knew he would have no choice but to try and swim out anyway — if the cave kept filling with water, he might not be so lucky again. He moved over to the edge, and taking a deep breath to prepare for the cold, was about to lower himself into the water, when he heard a splashing sound not far ahead of him. He froze, not daring to breathe.

There was a farty sort of noise, like someone blowing a raspberry. Baekhyun’s eyes widened. His head turned one way and then the other. It was hopeless, though. He could see nothing.

But he could still hear. And if there was someone there, maybe they would hear him too.

"Moby? Moby, is that you..?"

There was another raspberry in response — it was him. It had to be him.

It was all Baekhyun could do not to cry out with happiness. “Moby!” And then he checked himself. “Sorry — Minseok.”

It would take him a while to get used to that.

He squatted upon the narrow ledge, waiting, listening out for the sound of Minseok swimming towards him. Eventually he felt a hard tug at the cuff of his jeans. Minseok had grabbed onto them with his mouth, and was apparently trying to pull his leg into the water.

“Easy! Don’t drown me.”

Minseok barked, so loud it made Baekhyun shudder a little, and then there was a little _plop_ as he sank back under. 

“Hey, where did you go?” Baekhyun’s voice still hadn’t recovered from all the yelling he’d done earlier. “Come back! Please...”

He waited in agonising silence as seconds died away, and then minutes. In the end, Minseok was gone for so long that he started to panic again. How long could seals hold their breath for? He had no idea. He could only guess how much time had passed — five minutes, perhaps? More? But then, at last, he heard another splashing sound: the sound of his brother swimming back over towards him.

This time, Minseok made a low, muffled grumbling noise. From the sound he made, Baekhyun figured he was right in front of the ledge; he reached out, blindly feeling around until his hands landed on his brother’s slippery skin. 

“You came to save me, huh?” He was so ready to get out of that cave that he had all but forgotten the reason he had entered it in the first place. He wrapped both arms around Minseok’s strong neck and, taking a deep breath to prepare himself, launched into the water. Immediately he gasped at how cold it was, so cold he felt it in his bones. As soon as he grabbed on, Minseok began to move. He swam very slowly, trying to keep both their heads above the surface.

“I hope I won’t weigh you down,” Baekhyun said; he was nervous about it, but Minseok showed no signs of being hindered by his weight. He was so grateful for the help that he could have cried. He was exhausted, and if he’d tried to swim out of there by himself, he wasn’t sure he would have made it. Every so often, he accidentally inhaled a mouthful of seawater, and it burned the back of his throat as he tried to cough it back up.

With Baekhyun grabbing on to him for dear life, Minseok continued to swim his way through the cave. Baekhyun rested his head against his brother’s sleek back, holding on tight, until he was able, at last, to touch the cave floor. He let go of Minseok’s neck and waded after him on his own two feet, blindly following the sound of his movements. Now he could see a glimpse of sky; the mouth of the cave was up ahead. There was a faint pinkish glow — it was already dawn. He was so relieved he could have fallen to his knees, but then the weight of realisation crushed the joy out of him. He hadn’t found the skin. Chanyeol was depending on him to bring it back, to set him free, and he had failed.

Crying quietly to himself, Baekhyun trudged along, following the slapping sound of Minseok’s flippers as he moved along the rocks. Then Minseok suddenly turned around to face him, and something soft and wet fell before Baekhyun’s feet.

Puzzled, Baekhyun bent down to pick up whatever it was that Minseok had left in front of him. His breath caught in his throat when he felt that it was something wet and furry. The fur bristled beneath his fingertips when he touched it.

“Minseok,” he whispered, “is this..?”

Minseok only barked again, and then Baekhyun saw the dark shape of him clambering along the rocks in the direction of the beach. Still too shocked to speak, Baekhyun followed after him, trying his best not to trip over loose pebbles and pools of water. He had both arms wrapped tight around Chanyeol’s sealskin, hugging it close to his chest.

When they arrived at the beach, Baekhyun saw that the water had receded a little. He collapsed onto the sand with Chanyeol’s skin wrapped up in his arms, too tired to move. Now the sun was rising, and his heart sank at the realisation that he had been stuck inside the cave for the whole night. In the meantime, the foghorn had fallen silent. The engine must have finally stopped running. He could only hope that Chanyeol had managed to fend off oblivion all on his own. 

Soaked through and freezing, he pulled the wet sealskin on top of himself, shivering. Despite being wet, the skin was still warm. He knew he needed to get it back to Chanyeol — but first, just a second or two longer to rest. His body begged him for it. He closed his eyes, just for a moment. 

Eventually he felt a warm body settle beside him, and rolled over to fling his arms around his brother's neck, hugging him. Minseok let Baekhyun hug him for a while, and then he began to wriggle around, trying to throw him off.

“Alright, alright,” Baekhyun muttered, “I’m up… I’m going.” Minseok had a point; he couldn’t lose sight of his objective.

“Thank you,” he whispered, bending down to kiss the top of his brother’s head. “There’s no way I could have done this without you.” Still cradling the skin in his arms, he hurried up the path leading to the lighthouse.

When Baekhyun finally burst through the front door, Jim greeted him by jumping up at him, almost knocking him over, his stumpy tail wagging furiously.

“Hello, boy. Where’s Chanyeol? Is Chanyeol okay?”

Baekhyun ran up the stairs to the top of the tower, with Jim following at his heels. When he got up to the watch-room, breathless and exhausted, his heart dropped at the sight of Chanyeol, slumped forward with his head on the desk. 

Baekhyun hurried over to him, and began rubbing his back, in the space between his shoulder blades. “Chanyeol! Wake up. Please wake up...”

To his relief, Chanyeol was awake, but seemed to be just barely grasping the last threads of consciousness. He looked up at Baekhyun through half-closed eyes. “Baekhyun?” He looked confused, like he didn’t know where he was. “Was it you who turned the foghorn on earlier..?”

“Yes,” Baekhyun said impatiently, “but don’t worry about that now.” He held up Chanyeol’s sealskin in front of him. “I have your skin. We have to go, right this second.”

Chanyeol’s sleep-heavy eyes briefly widened, but he nodded in understanding and slowly got up from his seat. He was so weak he had trouble walking, and Baekhyun had to hold him by the arm to help him down the stairs. When they got outside the lighthouse, the sun had already risen, the sky awash with swirls of pastel orange on a canvas of pale blue. All was quiet; there was only the sound of the ocean. By the time Baekhyun had helped him walk down to the beach, Chanyeol was so exhausted that he collapsed upon the sand, just as Baekhyun had earlier. He lay there with his eyes closed, not moving.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Baekhyun said, lightly aiming a kick at his leg. “Don’t you dare fall asleep.”

“I’m not.” Chanyeol’s response was almost a groan. He sounded like he was in pain, and still slurred a little when he spoke. “I’m just resting my eyes.”

Like hell you are, Baekhyun thought. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired.” Chanyeol’s tongue poked out of his mouth to wet his lips. Every breath he drew sounded wheezy. He opened one eye to look at Baekhyun, and then he smiled. “And still a bit randy, if you can believe it,” he said, which made Baekhyun let out a short burst of laughter. It felt good to laugh again after the incredible stress of the last twelve hours.

They were running out of time, though; he could tell that much. Chanyeol only seemed to be getting weaker and weaker. Baekhyun knew he would have to help him get into his skin, since he seemed unlikely to manage it on his own. But how the hell was he going to do that? Surely he would have to strip him first. With a heavy sigh, he kneeled down at Chanyeol’s feet and began unlacing his boots, pulling them off and tossing them aside on the sand; then he unzipped his jeans and tugged them down over his legs. Those lovely long legs… when would he next wake up to find them tangled together with his own? 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m not being a weirdo. I’m just trying to get you home.”

Chanyeol seemed unable to move while Baekhyun undressed him, but his eyes still twinkled with amusement as he watched the proceedings. “Look at you, pretending that you’re not enjoying this,” he said. Baekhyun didn’t know how he could joke around at a time like this, although it did make him feel a little better. 

“Shush,” he muttered, but he could feel the little tug of a smile coming. He finished undressing Chanyeol quickly, mechanically, without letting his eyes linger too long on any particular area. He remembered the first time he had done this, his fingers teasing, slowly pushing each button through every loop; he had taken his time, and left Chanyeol panting with anticipation by the end of it. To undress him like this, without taking the time to enjoy him and his beauty, to savour every precious reaction, felt like sacrilege; but he kept going, saying nothing, swallowing against the lump in his throat. It was far from the first time he'd seen Chanyeol unclothed, but somehow he couldn’t help blushing anyway, for there was no heat of the moment to chase the bashfulness away. 

Chanyeol grabbed one of his wrists then, and began trailing his fingers up along Baekhyun’s arm beneath his sleeve, so slowly it gave him goosebumps. “Have you ever made love on a beach before?” he whispered, and Baekhyun was suddenly caught between two urges: stuffing a sock inside his mouth, and pinning him down on the sand to kiss him silly.

In the end, he did neither. “No,” he said, and swallowed again, hard. “I guess we never really got around to that.”

Now Chanyeol’s hand was on his leg, stroking the length of it. “Do you want to?”

“Don’t do this to me, please,” Baekhyun said under his breath. “Not now.” He didn’t know if Chanyeol looked disappointed or not, because he refused to look him in the eye. He felt like he might cry if he did.

“It’s okay,” Chanyeol said quietly, his fingers still tracing patterns on Baekhyun’s thigh through his jeans. He smiled. “Maybe we can save it for next time.”

As soon as all of Chanyeol’s clothes sat in a pile next to him on the sand, Baekhyun paused for a moment to bury his face in his lover’s belly, kissing it softly, breathing him in as deeply as he could. When he lifted his head again, Chanyeol’s eyes were closed. To Baekhyun’s relief, he was still breathing, and simply looked like he was resting. Gently, so as not to disturb him, Baekhyun began pulling the sealskin over his feet, up his legs, over his body. It was hard because the skin was still wet, and there was some resistance, especially when trying to get it over his shoulders. After considerable effort, he managed to pull it right up to Chanyeol’s chin. In a weird, morbid way, it was almost like closing up a body bag, but he tried not to dwell on this too much.

“Goodbye, my love... and welcome home,” he whispered; he leaned forward to kiss Chanyeol’s lips one last time, and his heart thrilled for a moment when he felt Chanyeol kissing him back— kissing him hard. The kiss was salty again, but this time he couldn’t tell whose tears he was tasting.

Chanyeol’s hand moved up to the back of Baekhyun’s head, fingers clutching at his hair to pull him in closer, mouthing the words _“I love you… I’ll come back for you,”_ into the kiss. As much as it broke him to do so, Baekhyun pulled away from his embrace, and then, squeezing his eyes shut, he pulled the sealskin up over Chanyeol’s head.

As soon as this was done, something odd happened. Thousands of tiny pinpricks of light, like luminous dust motes -- reminiscent of the bioluminescent plankton they had seen that night up in the tower -- all crowded around Chanyeol’s body. More and more of them came, floating down and settling upon him, until they covered him completely. Baekhyun fell back onto the sand and scooted away backwards on his rear, his jaw dropping in fear and awe at the sight before him. There were so many tiny lights that he could no longer see Chanyeol at all. For a moment, he felt the urge to look away. It didn't feel right for him to watch Chanyeol's 'transformation', if that was the correct word for it, although he didn't know why. He just knew he shouldn’t look, that this was something not meant for him to witness.

When he dared to look again, he saw that the lights had moved away, and Chanyeol was gone. In his place, there was a large silver-grey seal, with black spots all down its back. The seal looked up at Baekhyun with moist eyes. It flared its nostrils at him, and let out a soft snort.

Baekhyun got to his feet, dusting the sand away from his jeans. “Okay,” he said quietly. “It’s done. I suppose you can go home now.”

But the seal showed no sign of moving. It just sat there and blinked at him.

“Go!” Baekhyun hissed, waving his hands at it. “Shoo! Go away. Be gone.”

Still, the seal wouldn’t budge. So much for the unbearable compulsion to return to the ocean, Baekhyun thought bitterly. 

He turned away, covering his mouth with one hand to keep a sob from escaping. "Please go," he whispered, between wet and shuddering breaths. He stood there crying quietly for a moment, and then he felt something warm against his hand, and looked down to see the seal right next to him. It looked up at him and started rubbing its head against his hand, and then it leaned on his leg, closing its eyes. They stood there like that together, man and seal, in silence. 

After a while, the warmth against Baekhyun’s leg was gone. When he turned around to face the ocean, he saw Chanyeol’s seal-form moving toward it, in the same funny hobbling sort of way that Minseok moved when he was a seal. As it reached the shoreline, it turned its head around to look back at him; then it threw itself into the water, diving beneath the waves, and was gone.

Baekhyun waited to see if the seal would resurface again, the cold wind stinging his tear-stained face. It didn't. He turned away from the beach and headed back up to the lighthouse alone, carrying Chanyeol’s clothes in his hands, occasionally bringing them up to his face to smell them. All he could smell was the sea.

When he arrived back at the house, Jim greeted him once again at the door. “Now it’s just me and you, buddy,” Baekhyun whispered, and putting Chanyeol’s clothing to one side, he kneeled down to hug the dog. And the weight of this realisation drained him so entirely that all he could do was collapse in a heap on the hard stone floor and lie there, curled up with his chin against his chest. Jim lay down on the floor beside him, licked his hands and the salt of his tears, and waited for him to have his moment. The patience of animals, Baekhyun thought; Jim could probably wait at the door for the rest of his life for his master to come home, and still hold on to the tiniest hope of seeing him again. He wondered if perhaps he could borrow a bit of that patience, a tiny pinch of Jim’s blind optimism: the ability to see the potential for good in everyone and everything. He would need it to see him through until that day — if that day ever came. Until then, all he could do was hope for the best.


	11. Chapter 11

 

**XI.**

_Dear Taeng,_

_How have you been? I hope you are well. I can only apologise for not having written much lately, but there have been quite a few life adjustments on my end that made frequent correspondence difficult._

_It may come as a surprise for you to learn that I am now the principal lighthouse keeper of Redhill, since Chanyeol regrettably had to leave the island. Perhaps at some point, I will be able to talk to you about why he left, but I’m not sure I’m up to it just yet; the wound is still too fresh. I think I have some shore leave coming up soon, during which the Board will replace me with a relief keeper. Maybe I can visit you during that time, and we can talk about it then. You will have to prepare yourself in the meantime: it is a long and unlikely story._

_I now find it even harder to track the passage of time than I did before. When you are suddenly alone for the first time in a long time, it is difficult to know what is real and what is not. You could’ve sworn you just rolled over in bed to cradle his face in your hands, and kiss his closed eyelids; or that you just heard his voice a second ago, only to realise you’ve dreamed the whole thing._

_I know there is a reason I am still here. It _means_ something for me to be here — everything means something. Elsewhere, I might as well have been invisible; but here, action and inaction alike can have disastrous consequences... my work, my presence, they both carry considerable weight. Finally, I have that sense of purpose in life that I was looking for._

_But then, sometimes, when I’m lying in my bed in the afternoon, trying to get to sleep, I’ll find myself wondering… really, what is the point? If I can’t hold him in my arms; if I can’t whisper my love against his lips, what is the point?_

_Have you ever stopped to look up at a wave right as it breaks on top of you?_

_Much love,_

_Seal Boy_

 

☆ ☆

_Dearest Baekhyun,_

_There is a lot of love and light in you, which I have never had the privilege to find in anyone else. I am sorry to hear you are in pain, and I know I cannot offer any real words of comfort that will ease your heartache._

_I can only ask of you this one thing: please don’t ever bury that love, and that light. The world around you desperately needs them._

_Love always,_

_Taeyeon_

 

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

After Chanyeol went home to the sea, Redhill was gradually restored to the glory of the warmer months. The water began to recede, taking with it the last of the dead creatures, until the beach was free again; soon there was only the salty smell of the ocean and the sand, and the faint tang of kelp drying in the sun. Seals once again began to congregate on the beach and along the rocks, huddling for warmth in the chill of early spring.

In Chanyeol’s absence, Baekhyun took on all the lighthouse duties on his own. It was hard work, but somehow he managed to get it done, and he found he was thankful for the distraction. Sending the letter of resignation on Chanyeol’s behalf back with the supply boat made everything feel even more final, like the last nail in the coffin. Chanyeol wasn't dead, of course, but their time together at the lighthouse was. Maybe the Board would try to find him another companion; but with the reputation Redhill had, Baekhyun wouldn't be holding his breath for that to happen anytime soon. For the time being, he felt like he'd be better off alone anyway.

Since Chanyeol wasn’t around to do it anymore, he also began filling out the keeper’s log every day, although most of the time, his entries weren't very inspiring:

 _Redhill Light Keeper’s Log — September 14th 1978_  
_Cargo ship went past._  
 _One of the chickens fell into the old dunny pit and died. What a crappy way to go_.

 _Redhill Light Keeper’s Log — September 15th 1978_  
_Supply boat came. Kerosene use over past week: 6 x 5L cans_  
 _Found snake inside engine room, sent Jim after it. Jim did not go after it. Cannot enter engine room for foreseeable future._

_Redhill Light Keeper’s Log — September 16th 1978  
Cargo ship went past._

One night, while flicking back through some of Chanyeol’s old log entries, he found something handwritten on the last page of the log book, in very small letters:

_‘A man can be honest in any sort of skin.’— Herman Melville._

Baekhyun smiled and closed the book, feeling a tiny surge of victory. Perhaps he _had_ read Moby Dick, after all.

 

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Eventually, though he thought it would never happen, Baekhyun became used to being alone again. How many more times in his life would he have to get used to it, he wondered — this sorry business of being left behind. Some days, the longing he felt was like a wave, receding as quietly and gently as it had come in; then there were days when it knocked him down so hard and fast that he couldn’t breathe. Chanyeol had taught him so many things: how to run a lighthouse, and how to cope with the moody weather in all her guises, and how to hold his breath underwater. He had showed Baekhyun all the ways of being in love: how to give love, and how to receive it, and how to keep such a precious, fragile thing alive in a harsh and lonely world. He had shown Baekhyun how to kiss like he would never be kissed again, and now there was every chance that he wouldn’t be.

It was hard not to overthink it, sometimes. There were many things Baekhyun had wanted to do — that he would have done — if they’d had more time together, but he tried not to think about them too much. Doing so would only invite further misery. It occurred to him that he didn’t even have a single photograph of Chanyeol; there had been no camera around for him to take one with. He had never felt the need to, anyway, for Chanyeol had always been right there for him to look at whenever he wanted. Anyway, if he’d had a photo, what would he do with it? Would he stand there staring at it for hours, like his father had done to the funeral portraits of Minseok and his mother, and forget all about the time? Would life continue to pass by without him noticing?

It would have been nice to have something, though, so as not to forget his beautiful face; not that it was a face anyone could forget. On a good day, Baekhyun could lie down on Chanyeol’s bed in the early afternoon, close his eyes, and breathe in the now faded smell of him from the sheets (he still hadn’t dared to change them). He would allow his mind to be flooded with vivid memories — of the first time he ever laid eyes on Chanyeol. Of digging for cockles on the beach, and swimming naked together along the reef. Of surviving seabird attacks, and storms, and waves so huge they could climb the cliffs and touch the lighthouse. Of watching him smile in his sleep, and wondering what he was dreaming about. And that first kiss, which Baekhyun could still remember the taste of, as though it had only just happened — although for the life of him, he couldn’t recall what the last kiss was like. Maybe it was only his mind’s way of protecting him from more heartbreak.

There were many other ways to remember him. Every time Baekhyun lit the lamp, and polished the brass-work, and scrubbed the salt and seabird shit from every single window pane all on his own, he could feel Chanyeol there with him. He imagined Chanyeol telling him he had missed a spot, and found himself smiling and shaking his head. He tended to all of Chanyeol’s remaining plants, whatever was left that had not been ruined by the wild weather. He had even taken to wearing some of the (many) shirts Chanyeol had left behind, despite the fact that each one hung off him like a tropical-patterned tent; and now that his own hair had grown almost down to his shoulders, he had started braiding the spring’s first flowers into it.

Now that it was warmer, but still a little too chilly to swim, he frequently went down to sit on the beach with a book. While sitting there one afternoon, he saw a grey seal over on the rocks, which looked like it was watching him. Even from a distance, he could see the black spots peppered all down its back. There were more seals clustered on the sand further up the beach, but this one, for whatever reason, chose to be alone.

Baekhyun looked at the seal for a while longer, lost in thought, his book all but forgotten on his lap. He sat there until the sea began to change colour with the sun, and then he saw that the time was getting away from him. He got up and walked back to the lighthouse.

 

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Shortly after making the first weather report one morning, Baekhyun was about to go downstairs and make himself some breakfast when he heard a radio call coming through. He paused, waiting to hear if the call was intended for him.

_“Redhill Light… Redhill Light, this is the Ayr coast guard. Do you read me? Over.”_

Baekhyun hurried over to the radio, picking up the receiver and jamming his thumb down on the talk button. “This is Redhill Light. Over.”

There was a moment of silence before he had a response. _“We’ve had a mayday call about a mile south of Redhill, past the edge of the reef. A man and his two sons went out fishing, say they’ve struck a submerged object. The boat is already filling up with water. It’ll probably take thirty minutes for us to get out there, and they may be in serious trouble already -- can you go and see if you can assist until we arrive? Over.”_

“Will do. Over and out.” Returning the receiver to its cradle, Baekhyun began to pace back and forth across the watch-room, wringing his hands in a state of agitation. What the hell had he just agreed to? He wasn't a trained marine rescuer. But then, at the same time, he couldn't let those poor people on that sinking boat wait until someone from the coast guard came — especially not a father and his two kids. Who knew how long it would take for a boat to get out there?

He had a boat of his own, in the meantime, and he knew the rough location of the stricken vessel. It would only be a short ride from Redhill. Baekhyun sighed and turned toward the door, hurrying out of the watch-room and down the stairs. Within a few minutes, he was in the back of Little Fearless, untying her from the jetty. Just before starting up the motor, he dipped a hand into the water, and shrank away when he felt how cold it was. The icy air nipped at his skin wherever he wasn't covered by clothing; winter had already tucked itself away to make room for spring, but today was a lot colder than it had been lately, and that was a problem.

He probably looked wild, he realised, as he pulled away from the island; he hadn't shaved in several days, was running on very little sleep, and his long hair was tangled and unwashed. His cheeks burned with the cold wind. He quickly tossed all thoughts aside when he eventually saw something white up ahead of him: as he approached, he saw that the bow of the sunken boat was sticking up out of the water, the rest of it already below the surface. He could see a small figure hunched on top of the bow, wearing a bright yellow life-jacket and gripping on for dear life. It was a young boy. As soon as the boy saw him, he started waving frantically. There was someone else floating beside the boat, Baekhyun realised -- a man, who he assumed was the boy’s father. Like the boy, he also wore a yellow life-jacket.

"Thank God," the man said, as Baekhyun slowly pulled in towards them. His teeth were chattering so much from the cold that Baekhyun found it hard to understand what he was saying. "Thank God you're here.”

“I’m from the lighthouse," Baekhyun told him. "The coast guard will be sending a rescue boat over, but it might be a while before they get out here, so I came around to see if I could help. Is there anyone else out there? I was told there were three of you.”

"My younger son,” the man said weakly. “He drifted away. He has a life-jacket on, but… I need to find him, and I can hardly move."

“Okay, we’ll try to find him very soon. Just remain calm, and I’ll see what I can do.” Baekhyun froze for a moment, unsure of what to do next. He felt unprepared -- and unqualified -- to be in the position he'd found himself in. But he could see that the man and his son were desperate; until real help came, what little assistance and comfort he could offer was all the hope they had.

“First I’m going to make sure you two are safe inside my boat, and then I’ll go and look for your other son,” he said. “I can’t say this is something I do very often, though, so you’ll have to excuse me. I’m very much a novice.” Drawing as near as he could, he reached out to the man first, who grabbed onto his hand. Baekhyun was struck by the look in his eyes. He couldn’t remember ever seeing a stranger looking at him like like that: with relief and gratitude, rather than mistrust or disdain. The boat rocked a little as Baekhyun helped the man climb inside, and he collapsed onto the floor, shivering violently.

Baekhyun rummaged around for the spare blankets that he kept inside the boat, and draped one of them around the man's shoulders. Then he turned towards the boy, who was still perched on top of the sinking wreck.

“I need you to jump into the water and swim over to me,” he called out to the boy. “It's not very far. Do you think you can do that?”

The boy’s face quickly turned paler than it already was, and he vigorously shook his head.

"Can you swim?" Baekhyun asked.

"Kind of,” the boy said, though he didn’t sound very sure of it. His eyes were so wide with fear that he reminded Baekhyun of a cornered animal. He didn't blame the boy for being scared; at a glance, he couldn't have been any older than ten or eleven.

"What's your name?" he asked, trying to sound as calm as possible. If the boy sensed any panic from him, then he would probably start panicking too.

The boy looked at him warily. “Youngjae.”

Baekhyun leaned over the side of the boat with his arms held out. “Come on, Youngjae… you can do it. I can’t get too much closer to your boat, or I might risk hitting it with mine, and then we all might get ourselves in even more trouble. Besides, your dad really wants you to be safe; that's why he stayed in the water, and let you sit up there so you could keep dry. But that boat won't stay above the surface much longer.”

"What about sharks?" Youngjae asked, in a timid voice.

"There aren't any sharks around here. It’s only a few metres. You're going to be just fine." Baekhyun didn’t know if what he said about the sharks was true, but he knew it was what the boy needed to hear. Anyway, he very rarely saw any signs of sharks in the waters around the island, apart from the occasional carcass washed up on the beach. The boy still looked more than reluctant, and probably would have stayed there much longer if the wreck hadn’t shuddered and groaned violently beneath him, almost pulling him down into the sea. Crying out in surprise, he finally launched himself into the water, gasping at the cold as he went in; when he appeared to struggle for a moment, Baekhyun felt a wave of panic, and was almost ready to jump in and get him. But then Youngjae managed to recover himself, and slowly began to paddle across to the boat.

"That's the way." Baekhyun and the boy’s father both leaned over the gunwale, reaching out towards him and shouting words of encouragement. “You’re nearly there. Just a little bit further." Youngjae grabbed on to one of his father’s hands, and one of Baekhyun’s, and both men hauled him up into the boat. By this time, the wreck the boy had been perched on only minutes before was gone, completely swallowed up by the ocean.

As soon as Youngjae was safely inside the boat, Baekhyun draped another blanket around his small frame. “Okay, now both of you just stay here, and try to keep warm,” he said. “Help should arrive before too long. In the meantime, we'll see if we can hopefully locate your other son."

The man seemed spent again, having used his last reserve of energy to help pull his son into the boat. “I need to ask you something,” he said to Baekhyun, when he had composed himself a little. “Are you the keeper of the Redhill Island lighthouse?”

Baekhyun paused in the middle of lifting his shirt up, and turned around slowly to look at the man. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I am.”

The man nodded, and leaned his head back against the side of the boat with his eyes partly closed. “Thank you,” was all he said, in a weak whisper. Baekhyun looked at him for a moment longer, and then at Youngjae huddled next to him, shivering beneath his own blanket. Turning away from them, he resumed removing all his clothes, leaving only his underwear. He was about to dive into the water when he saw it in the distance — a floating object. It looked like it was moving towards them: something small and bright yellow.

“Do you see it? Over there," he said, pointing at it. He frowned, squinting to keep the sun out of his eyes. “It looks like… a life-jacket.”

Upon hearing this, the man got to his feet, turning to look in the direction of Baekhyun's finger. “That must be Jinyoung’s life-jacket… but where is he?” He was leaning over the side of the boat now, and starting to panic. For a moment, Baekhyun was worried he might lean too far and fall in.

“It was far too big for him,” the man was saying. He sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “I knew it was too big, but it was all we had...”

Baekhyun gripped the gunwale as he leaned out over it, straining to see if there was any sign of a struggling child. If the life-jacket was too big for the boy, then he could easily have slipped right out of it. He could even be under the water right now.

Beside him, the man had shrugged off his blanket, and was bending over to remove his shoes. "I have to go in,” he muttered to himself. “I have to find him."

"Please, sir… just sit back down. You're in no condition to go in there. I'm a fairly strong swimmer, but I won't be able to save both of you if something bad happens.” Baekhyun paused for a moment, trying to calm his racing thoughts. “How old is your son? And can he swim?"

“He’s only six,” the man said, wiping tears from his eyes. He sank down to the floor of the boat again, to Baekhyun's relief. “And he can swim a little, but not very well. He’s so young.”

"Right. And what's he wearing?"

"He's got a red windbreaker on. And blue jeans."

Baekhyun nodded. Without another word to the man, he stepped up onto the side of the boat and dived into the sea. As soon as he hit the water, it was so cold he felt like he couldn’t breathe. For a few seconds he thought his heart might stop, and he instantly regretted taking off his clothes; but he knew they would only hinder his movement as he swam, and he couldn’t afford to be hindered. He would have expected to quickly go numb, but he didn’t; instead the water was so cold that it was painful. It felt like it would slice right through him, and he was so winded by the shock of it that he couldn’t even bring himself to groan or cry out; he could barely hold on to a single thought for more than a second or two.

When he had recovered a little, he began to swim over in the direction of the floating life-jacket, hoping the movement might bring some warmth back to his screaming muscles. At last, everything began to go blessedly numb. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to relax a little; then he filled his lungs with as much air as he could, and ducked his head under the water again.

Looking around, he couldn't see anything. He was surrounded by blue water, and bubbles, and tiny specks of kelp. There were no dark shapes; nothing that looked like the silhouette of a drowning child. Not even a single fish -- just a frightening expanse of nothing. He was completely alone.

He kept swimming. Seconds felt like minutes, which felt like hours. He wanted to give up many times — the burn in his muscles and his lungs was unbearable — but he could hear their voices in his head. Not cheering him on — goading him. _Swim, seal boy, swim._ He swam and swam, coming up for air only when he really had to, when he was at the end of his rope.

Finally, up ahead, something came into view. Something red.

There was the other boy, Jinyoung. The bright red of his windbreaker puffed out around him, filling up with water. He had not yet descended too far from the surface, and Baekhyun could only hope he had not been under very long. But as he approached, he saw the boy’s face was so pale that it was white, almost as white as paper. His eyes were closed, and he looked peaceful. Far too peaceful.

Baekhyun thought it was probably too late, and a wave of sadness rippled through him. He swam over as fast as he could, reaching out to grab the sleeve of the boy's windbreaker. As soon as he did this, Jinyoung's eyes opened wide to stare at him; a spray of bubbles erupted from his mouth, as though he were screaming underwater, but there was no sound. It was a miracle that he was alive, but Baekhyun didn't have the time to dwell on it; the sea could still easily claim them both if he wasn’t quick enough. Gripping the boy's sleeve, he began to swim towards the surface, dragging Jinyoung along with him.

_Swim, seal boy, swim, or you’ll get a harpoon in the back._

Just before he reached the top, he pushed Jinyoung up ahead of him, and then at last he emerged right behind the boy, gasping for air. The cold water had drained him of nearly all his energy, and he was almost too exhausted to carry Jinyoung along with him towards the boat. The boy alternated between choked sobs and coughing up seawater, but he didn't struggle. He held on to Baekhyun, digging his little fingers into the bare skin of his shoulders. He did it so hard that Baekhyun was sure it would have hurt, if he hadn't been so numb from the freezing water.

As they got closer to where he'd anchored the boat, he called out “I’ve got him!”, and immediately the boy’s father and brother stood up to lean over the gunwale. When he was close enough, Baekhyun held the little boy up towards them, and his father reached out to take him in; he sobbed as he gathered his son into his arms, and the relief on his face was indescribable. He held Jinyoung tight, wrapping a blanket around him, repeatedly kissing both of his cheeks.

Baekhyun just floated there for a while, almost in a dream-like state, watching the wonderful scene he had helped to create: a father reunited with his two young sons. No one had been lost. They were so relieved to be alive and together again, the three of them huddled up close, that they seemed to have forgotten all about him. And that was fine; that was how it was meant to be.

Closing his eyes, Baekhyun gave in at last to the cold and fatigue, slipping quietly beneath the surface of the water.

 

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

Soon he could no longer feel the cold, or the sea around him. The water was light like air, and he sank like a stone into the blackness. How many fathoms deep was he now, he wondered, in his unfathomable descent; and how could he count out his tears here underwater, when they made up the entire ocean around him? He would have expected his mind to race, but his thoughts were slow-moving, despite the pressure building inside his head and chest.

For all he knew, he had been born in the water, and now he would die in it as well. It seemed a fitting end.

What would it be like? For some reason, he wasn't all that scared anymore, not so much as he was curious. Would his life flash before his eyes? He had heard somewhere that this was something that happened before a person died. How would it happen — in photographic stills, or a continuous reel of moments; and how would his mind decide which ones were more important to replay in the last few minutes he had left?

But his life was not what flashed before his eyes, at least not in its entirety. Instead the first thing he saw was an image of Chanyeol lying beside him on the bed, sleeping peacefully, with that little hint of a secretive smile — like the smile of a saint. He saw the first kiss, and the last goodbye. He felt his mother’s warm arms cradling him, and heard his brother’s songs, and saw his father’s bright smile from that day he reeled in his very first fish. Life did not flash before his eyes, but love did.

_Taeng, if I could write to you one last time, what would I tell you?_

_I would tell you how it feels to have someone breathe their love into you, and how it feels to breathe that love back into them. I would wish you a lifetime of love just like it, in return for the love you gave to me; and I would tell you not to be sad. Maybe it wasn't a long life, but I can promise you that I lived it well._

This was something the sea could never rob him of: the knowledge that he had loved and been loved in return, and that there was still someone out there to whom he mattered.

A dark shape came hovering beneath him, then, and in his last clear thought before he began to fade away… was it a submarine?

No, not a submarine — it was too small for that. There were two dark shapes now. They moved so beautifully, so gracefully through the water; just like they were weightless, weaving circles all around him. They truly belonged here, and they almost made him feel like he belonged here too, in the gentle arms of the ocean. Was that burning, crushing feeling in his chest because his heart was too full, or was it that his lungs were about to burst? Perhaps it was both.

The two bodies floated below him, lifting him up towards the sunlight. His arms came to rest around both of their necks. He closed his eyes. Though he couldn’t tell if it was a dream or not, he saw Kopakonan the seal-woman emerging from the darkness; this time her expression was soft, her black eyes gentle and devoid of anger. Smiling, she reached out her hand to him, and he pushed himself forward to grab it.

They would find him later: the seal boy of Redhill, lying on the shore of his island — barely conscious, but alive. There were two seals huddled up against him, their warm bodies sheltering him from the bitterly cold wind: one of them large and spotted and silvery-grey, and the other small and brown, with a tiny piece missing from one hind flipper.


	12. Epilogue

Epilogue

_Exultation is the going  
Of an inland soul to sea, —  
Past the houses, past the headlands,  
Into deep eternity!_

_Bred as we, among the mountains,  
Can the sailor understand  
The divine intoxication  
Of the first league out from land?  
— Emily Dickinson_

☆ﾟ･｡°*. ﾟ☆ﾟ

_Dear Taeng,_

_It has been a while since I wrote to you, so here is a nice long letter. I am sorry if it bores you to tears. How are you? I hope you are well — I miss you dearly. Truthfully, there aren’t a lot of things I miss about home, but you will always be one of the few._

_I think living here so long has ruined me now. When they put me on shore leave, within a couple of days I was itching to come back — I even thought I would have paid them for the privilege. The only good part about coming home was seeing you again; otherwise, I have never felt less at home in a place that was once the only home I knew. I remember watching people pass by me in the street, and wondering what they thought about… what they wanted from life. If they were happy. If they yearned for the same thing I did — something so simple, and yet unattainable. For some reason, I couldn’t read anyone out there at all, and something about it made me feel so alone._

_I never had to wonder what he thought about. Even when he didn’t speak, his eyes told me everything._

_I didn't really know what to do with the medal the coast guard gave me, so I laid it on my brother's grave when I went to visit the cemetery. I appreciated the gesture, but I like to give credit where credit is due, and I have enough bits of brass to polish around here as it is. The father of the two boys did buy a big, beautiful wood-panelled television set for the lighthouse, though, as a token of his thanks. It came along in the boat with the last supply delivery — a very nice surprise. Lately I have been watching the evening news on it every day. It's nice to have a little window back into the real world, which I can switch off whenever I want to — and now you won't have to fill me in on current affairs when you write to me! I recently watched a great film called 'The Deep', which I highly recommend, if you haven't seen it already._

_I have mostly adjusted to keeping the light on my own. It’s hard work, but I manage. In the afternoons — in the precious little free time I have to myself — I wander along the beach, sit down, and read whatever books I have on hand. My old seal friend Moby hasn't come to see me in a while, but I know he has a new life to live, and his own mysteries to solve. Bound to my island, I am waiting for a ship to come in, while he is out there searching for the ones that were lost. I hope he finds them soon._

_In the meantime, there is plenty to keep me busy. I light the lamp, polish the lens and the brass-work, and wipe down the lantern-room windows. I read the sky and report on the weather, and I gather up the (thankfully few) corpses of disoriented seabirds from around the floor of the gallery. I bury them at sea to set free their little sailors’ souls, and I wait. I am not here to dwell on the meaning of my life, but to light the way so that others may not lose theirs._

_Now I have another seal friend. I have no way of knowing for sure that it’s him; I do know that there is such a thing as coincidence. But I always hold on to that hope; I reach out and grab it with both hands. Sometimes, in the foggy dawn when I can’t get the blasted foghorn to work, and I am there by the fog-bell yanking that rope until my palms are blistered, or standing out on the clifftop with my coloured flags, frantically signalling God-knows-what at a little fishing boat straying dangerously close to the reef — those are the times when hope is all I have. There is a poem that says hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul; I’m sure you know it well. But my vision of hope is a wind: one that fills the sails of any vessel passing through the treacherous waters surrounding our island, and gently guides her in to safe harbour._

_This new seal friend of mine, he’s quite a bit bigger than most seals I’ve seen on Redhill, and his fur is not brown, but sleek and silvery, spotted here and there with black. He comes to see me all the time — almost every day, in fact. He shows me all the best places to fish, and I always thank him with a generous portion of my catch in return. Lately I have discovered that he likes it when I sit on the sand and read to him. He will lay his head in my lap while I read, and he seems to enjoy all kinds of stories, but if I try to read him Moby Dick — if I dare to even utter those dreaded words 'call me Ishmael' — he will grunt in displeasure and shuffle back into the ocean, because life is too short for such dull and weighty tomes, and he has other more important seal-y things he could be doing instead. It always makes me laugh._

_Some days, if I go down to the beach and find he is not there, I sit on the shore alone and keep watch, looking out to the horizon as far as I can see. I cannot tell you how long I've been waiting; I can only tell you that I am getting very good at it now. I once filled this ocean with my tears, and I don't have much left to offer it — the sea has already taken all it can from me. But it has promised me something more in return, and I eagerly wait for it to make good on that promise._

_What more can I tell you, my dear friend… only that I feel fortunate, above all else. How many of us can say that we are wrecked entirely of our own choosing?_

_Because someday soon, I know I'll see him again, holding his little head above the water as he swims in to shore. Where the waves meet the sand, he will take his first uneasy steps on his own two feet, sliding his sealskin down over his body, and there he'll be: my seal-mate, my love. He will walk towards me, tossing his wet hair over his shoulders, smiling that little smile that he keeps only for me. And he will take me into his arms and kiss me, breathing his love into my mouth; only then will I be able to let it go, the breath that I have been holding for far too long._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a mythical creature, the selkie traditionally features in the folk tales of Celtic and some Nordic cultures, particularly those of Ireland, Scotland and the Faroe Islands. Kopakonan the seal-woman is a real figure in Faroese folklore, but her story and physical description are different to how I have depicted her. Otherwise, I have cherry-picked bits and pieces from a number of legends surrounding the seal people — altering them to fit the plot, as well as adding some bits of my own — and so elements of this story may only bear a passing resemblance to existing selkie folklore. No offence is meant to the original tellers of these tales, and I credit them for many of the ideas contained in this story.


End file.
